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16 Great Things about ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ Season 2

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In my last article about The Rings of Power, I talked about my 15 favorite things about Season 1. Here – in no particular order – are my 16 favorite things about Rings’ second season. Be warned that this list contains spoilers for not only Season 2, but also future events in the series, and the Lord of the Rings as well.

*All pictures in this article are the property of Amazon.*

1. Sauron’s Death

Season 2 opens with a flashback to Sauron trying to take command of Middle-Earth’s orcs following Morgoth’s fall. Unsurprisingly, the orcs (and Adar) don’t take kindly to being told that they’ll be sacrificed to achieve Sauron’s goals, so they express their displeasure by stabbing Sauron a few hundred times until he explodes, turning the surrounding terrain into a winter wonderland.

Many fans of Tolkien’s works have decried this scene for contradicting Sauron’s character (he tries to reason with the orcs, where he dominates them in the books with fear and terror), but I think this scene is a clever look at Sauron’s journey as a character. Originally, he was a being who loved order and perfection, but during his time as Morgoth’s servant Sauron was corrupted into being willing to enslave, torture, and kill others to get what he wanted. With Morgoth gone, some of Sauron’s original goodness is poking through, and this scene shows him at the halfway point between the good spirit he was originally, and the hate-filled tyrant of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Despite contradicting Season One of Rings’ (Adar said that he killed Sauron after the latter experimented on so many orcs; here, he and the orcs kill Sauron before those experiments begin), this prologue is a great way to open the season.

2. Sauron’s Rebirth

Something never elaborated on in Tolkien’s works is how Sauron creates a new body for himself each time he was killed, saying only that it took Sauron longer and longer with each subsequent death. Rings lets us see how the process might have gone: after being killed by the orcs, Sauron slowly rebuilds himself from a few drops of blood, taking the lives of insects, rats, and eventually people before he can finally create a new body for himself and resume his quest to conquer Middle-Earth.

What I like about this scene is that, compared to everything else we’ve seen of Tolkien’s world onscreen, this is something out of a story by H.P. Lovecraft: we’re watching the birth of an abomination from the dark, moldy depths of the earth, something that doesn’t belong to the natural order of things. And while this putrid mass of cancerous growth may look weak and frail, it’s still one of the most powerful and evil things in existence. And in a nice nod to Tolkien’s mythology, the whole sequence ties into his recurring theme that evil cannot create new things, only corrupt what has already been made: where Sauron could once manifest a beautiful form before his fall, now he is forced to take life from others to create a body for himself, one that may seem normal, but is only a mask to hide the evil within.

3. Choose Good

Sauron may have created a new body for himself, but he is now at the lowest point of his entire existence: he’s lost his position as Morgoth’s right hand. He has no armies to command, he’s been exiled from his home in Valinor, and his dreams of creating a perfect, orderly world are in tatters. But being humbled presents him with an opportunity to realize what he’s done and turn his life around, something that he seems to seriously consider when he comes across a group of refugees, one of whom unknowingly offers him the chance to leave his destructive path and choose a new, better one.

Later, when talking on a ship, the same man gives Sauron a brief, but perfect summary of what it means to turn from evil and become good:

I like to imagine that this meeting isn’t due to chance, but actually an act of fate: in The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf told Frodo that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and that Frodo was also meant to have it. During the events of The Hobbit, Gandalf and Thorin seem to have been guided to meet each other in Bree, which ultimately led to the Quest of Erebor and the death of Smaug, saving Middle-Earth from his wrath.

With all that said, I believe that Eru subtly guided the old man into meeting Sauron and inspired him to say the right things in hopes of helping the fallen Maiar find his way back to the light… but, alas, Sauron chooses instead to be a big meany butt and be evil (and confirming that he was lying to Galadriel about trying to redeem himself in Season 1).

Had Sauron listened to the man and chosen differently, the fate of Middle-Earth would have been very different, indeed.

4. Rhûn

If there’s one thing The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion has in common, it’s that we don’t get to see a world outside of the standard European fantasy environment (tall mountains, forests, castles, and the like). That’s why it’s such a delight in Season 2 that we finally get to see the deserts of Rhûn – the homeland of the Easterlings – on screen for the very first time.

While we don’t get much outside of rocks, dead trees, barren canyons, and lots of sand, it’s great to finally see something other than European climates, and remember that Middle-Earth is so much bigger and varied than what we’ve seen in Tolkien’s books.

5. Celebrimbor

Though he had an important role to play in Season 1 of Rings, where he forged the three rings of the Elves, Season 2 is where Celebrimbor gets to come into his own and shine as one of the most famous elves of the Second Age. As the descendant of the famously fiery and temperamental Fëanor, Celebrimbor is an elf who doesn’t desire fame, power, or ruling others, but only in creating beautiful things and trying to undo the mistakes of his ancestor… a desire that makes him him all-too vulnerable to Sauron’s manipulations.

While he has all the qualities of being a noble hero like Gandalf, Aragorn, and Galadriel, Celembrimbor is unfortunately like Isildur and Bromoir: beings who fight and strive to do what is right at great personal cost, but who’s tales are told as tragedies by those who come after them. Celebrimbor’s a noble and kind-hearted elf, but his determination to make his mark on the world has catastrophic consequences for the world at large.

Yet, his noble intentions, determination to do what is right after realizing he’s been lied to and deceived by Sauron, and only wanting to do good makes him endearing and likeable. Like Diza, he’s an elf you’d be happy to share ale with at a tavern after a long day’s work.

6. Celebrimbor’s Anvil

It’s only onscreen for a few seconds, but when Celebrimbor is doing some paperwork in his office, sharp-eyed viewers will see that he uses a tiny anvil as a paperweight, implying that the mighty Celebrimbor, greatest Elven smith of the Second Age, has a good sense of humor. Plus, the image of noble and graceful elves going through the effort to craft, shape, and forge an itty-bitty, widdle anvil is hilarious. Why haven’t we gotten this thing as an officially licensed collectible yet?

7. The Hammer and the Crown

Middle-Earth has its fair share of historical objects that Indiana Jones would be happy to track down, and ‘Rings’ has two big ones in Season 2: Fëanor’s hammer, and Morgoth’s crown.

While fans who have only watched the films or seen the show can understand that these are important artifacts, readers of Tolkien’s works will get the most enjoyment out of seeing the hammer forged the most beautiful objects in all of creation (the Silmarils), and that crown that was worn by the most evil being who will ever exist (and that held the aforementioned jewels in its spiky embrace). Both go a long way to help make the world of Middle-Earth feel ancient and lived in, and that they played huge parts in changing the course of history long before the show began.

8. The Nameless Thing

One of the most fascinating parts of Tolkien’s world are the nameless things: eldritch horrors that live in the deepest, darkest fissures deep beneath the mountains of the world that are even older than Sauron. They are only mentioned briefly in Tolkien’s works, but are apparently so frightening that even Gandalf refuses to describe these abominations after encountering them when pursuing the balrog after their fall into the pit of Khazad-dûm. Season 2 gives us a glimpse of one in the form of a giant, grotesque worm-thing that tries to eat Isildur and Arondir before being sliced up from the inside and being (presumably) turned into nameless thing-burgers for dinner.

Is this a scene that doesn’t really add anything to the overall plot? Yes. Could it have been cut out without any effect on the story? Yes. Is it cool to see one of the most mysterious, dark, and vicious things that Tolkien ever wrote about? Heck yes.

9. Mirdania Sees Sauron’s True Form

One of Tolkien’s smartest decisions in writing The Lord of the Rings was not describing what Sauron looks like: he’s an unseen evil, a force so powerful and so dreadful that you don’t even have to be anywhere near him to experience the power of his malice. And despite having more screentime in Rings of Power than both the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films combined, Rings has never shown Sauron’s true form, only his armor from the First Age and the disguises he wears to interact with others.

The closest we get to getting a glimpse of Sauron’s true form is when one of Celebrimbor’s assistants, Mirdania, accidentally enters the unseen world and sees Sauron as he really is (without realizing who she’s looking at), the experience shaking her to her core… but we don’t see that. All we get is Mirdania describing a tall being with pitiless eyes and skin made of flames. By describing the moment, but not showing it, Rings follows Tolkien’s example by leaving it up to the viewer’s imagination to visualize what Sauron’s true, malevolent form must look like.

One last little twist about the scene: after Mirdania describes what she saw, who’s the first one to comfort her? Sauron himself.

10. The Raid on the Temple

One of season 2’s strongest storylines is showing Numenor’s gradual downfall. While season 1 hinted that the greatest kingdom of Men in Middle-Earth was starting to crumble from within, season 2 brings this rot out into the open as a power-hungry Ar-Pharazôn begins his campaign to take control of the island empire and persecute those loyal to the Valar, the elves, and their ways.

The one scene that perfectly embodies Numenor’s descent into evil is the raid on the Faithful’s temple. Starting off as a peaceful funeral ceremony bidding farewell to all who died on the mainland in the last season, it devolves into Pharazôn’s sniveling weasel of a son – Kemen – gleefully interrupting the ceremony and announcing the destruction of the temple, destroying sacred artifacts for the fun of it, and then emotionally manipulating Isildur’s friend Valandil into starting a fight to justify using lethal force against the faithful, ending with Kemen stabbing Valandil in the back.

This scene, more than any other in the series, showcases the cruelty and moral rot of Numenor. What’s more chilling is that there are no orcs here, no supernatural monsters or ancient evils emotionally manipulating everyone present. It’s just humans being evil to one another, and it’s arguably scarier than any demon Tolkien could conjure up. And the worst part is that this is only a taste of the evil that Numenor is going to unleash upon Middle-Earth at large in the years to come.

(As an aside, I think there’s a very good chance that Kemen will end up being one of the Ringwraiths: Tolkien’s writings strongly imply that at least three Ringwraiths were of Numenorian descent, and it’s easy to see Kemen being nasty and power-hungry enough to accept a ring of power by Sauron. And if he wants to take the throne of Numenor, only to be denied, then Sauron might offer to make him a great lord and promise him a kingdom of his own to rule… Angmar, perhaps?)

11. Sauron’s Deceptions

One of Sauron’s greatest strengths is his ability to deceive and manipulate almost anyone he encounters, including the smartest, wisest, and most powerful elves in Middle-Earth. Yet, the books are vague about how he does this beyond his ability to take fair forms and cast illusions. While most of his manipulations in Season 2 follows the pattern of narcissists abusing others (lovebombing, gaslighting, ignoring boundaries, victim blaming, etc.), we get to see Sauron’s supernatural abilities at work when he conjures a vision of Eregion to subtly trap Celebrimbor. Like the holodeck from Star Trek, Celebrimbor can walk around in this vision, touch things, interact with other elves, and continue his work… completely unaware that the real Eregion is being bombed into rubble by orcs.

This illusion is a fascinating demonstration of Sauron’s power and his ability to deceive others, and makes you wonder how he’s used this ability on others throughout his time in Middle-Earth: It’s one thing to resist lies and flattery, but it’s much harder to resist when the very world around you is a lie and you don’t know it.

12. Who’s Will Is Stronger?

So often in fantasy stories, dark lords and evil-doers have all the power and all the advantages over their good counterparts, including the willingness to do whatever needs to be done to achieve their goals. But Celebrimbor gets a moment to prove that the good guys can be equally as strong-willed: shackled to his desk and unable to stop Sauron from taking the rings that he will use to enslave men and create the ringwraiths, Celebrimbor realizes the only way he can get free is to cut off his own thumb so he can slip through his shackle. But doing so means that he will never again be able to use a hammer, an anvil, and a forge to create things. Celebrimbor’s Eru-given gifts of forging and creating will be forfeit, and his dreams of making Middle-Earth beautiful will be gone.

Knowing all that, Celebrimbor still cuts off his thumb.

While gruesome, this is one of Celebrimbor’s best character moments: when everything is on the line, he is willing to give up his life’s dream for the chance to stop Sauron and save others. While it is, unfortunately, all for nothing in the long run, never let it be said that Celebrimbor did something most of us wouldn’t have the courage to do.

13. Celebrimbor’s Death

Celbrimbor’s death is one of the more gruesome in Middle-Earth media: tortured by being shot repeatedly with arrows from Sauron himself, threatened with supernatural means to ensure he doesn’t die, and then being impaled with a spear through the gut before finally dying, it’s a gruesome spectacle. Yet, one thing that’s puzzled me ever since watching it is why Sauron cries after Celebrimbor’s death. He wouldn’t see Celebrimbor as a friend, nor would a being such as himself be frightened at a prophecy that his rings will one day destroy him. So why the tears?

After mulling things over, I’ve come to think that the reason Sauron cries is because he’s realized he’s crossed the point of no return. All throughout Season 1 and 2, Sauron says that his greatest goal is to heal Middle-Earth of the hurts he helped inflict upon it. Yet, when staring at Celebrimbor’s corpse, Celebrimbor’s words cut through all the lies he’s told himself:

“I go now to the west, blown forth on a wind that you can never follow.”

I think Sauron realized that Celebrimbor was right: After all he’s done, and after all the times he’s rejected the chance to turn away from evil, it now hits Sauron that he can never go back to Valinor, his home. If he did, the Valar would imprison him, find him irredeemable, and thrust him into the void to join his master in endless darkness.

In my opinion, this is the moment where the last piece of good in Sauron dies. From here, he will fully embrace evil to achieve his goals and abandon any attempt to kid himself that he’s doing this to help others. Celebrimbor may have died here, but so did a tiny, flickering spark of light that will never be re-kindled.

14. Adar Turns Back to the Light.

One of my favorite storytelling tropes is when a villain sincerely and truly repents of their ways and turns their backs on evil. That’s why one of my favorite scene in all of Rings – tied with Sauron being offered the chance to turn from evil, as described above – comes with Adar turning back to the light.

Having obtained Galadriel’s ring, Adar seems poised to use it as a weapon to turn the tide in his war against Sauron and finally defeat him once and for all… but that’s not what happens. Though exactly what happened isn’t shown, it’s logical to assume that Adar’s mind was healed by Galdriel’s ring, making him realize how much evil, death, and destruction he had caused since beginning his quest to create a homeland for the orcs. But instead of giving into despair and hopelessness, or telling himself even more lies to cover up the pain as Sauron did, Adar instead chooses to pursue a path of peace.

While his quest for redemption only lasted a few minutes, Adar holds the unique distinction of being the only true villain in Tolkien’s universe – whether in books, films, games, and TV shows – to sincerely repent, something that Sauron, Saruman, Grima Wormtongue, and so many others never did.

While his ultimate quest to have the orcs live in peace was doomed to never succeed, I hope Adar can return in future seasons (due to Elves being able to reincarnate in Valinor if they are killed), and become of the good guys fighting against Sauron.

15. “Dwarves!”

Dwarves!

16. Sauron vs Galadriel

In Tolkien’s writing, an interesting paradox is introduced regarding Sauron: Despite his overwhelming power, strength, and innate magical abilities, he always loses whenever he gets into a physical fight with someone. That trend is played with at the climax of Season 2, when we get our very first scene of the Dark Lord going toe-to-toe with an opponent onscreen when he fights Galadriel for the 9 rings of power. For the majority of the fight, Sauron easily has the upper hand, toying with her mind and easily deflecting her blows before finally defeating her with a stab from Morgoth’s crown, and taking the 9 rings.

While I enjoy the fight for being able to see my favorite fictional villain getting to show off his fighting skills (and using Morgoth’s crown as a weapon is an ingenious and clever idea), I also like how the fight shows that even if Sauron defeated Galadriel, destroyed Eregion, and got his rings, he still lost: Galadriel escapes, and his potential ally and slave will instead be a thorn in his side for the rest of his days, giving hope, comfort, and aid to those who fight against Sauron, and will be one of the major players in his final and permanent defeat.

Sauron may have won this battle, but though it will take centuries for it to happen, he has ultimately lost his war to enslave Middle-Earth, and Galadriel escaping is just the first of many twists of fate that will finally lead to his final and ultimate defeat.

That’s it for Season 2, which I think is a big improvement over Season 1; come back in 2027 when we’ll take a look of my favorite moments from the third season of ‘The Rings of Power’.

11 Great Things About David Gordon Green’s ‘Halloween’ trilogy

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Note: This post spoils the stories of the 2018 film Halloween and its two sequels: Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends. It also contains videos depicting fictional gore and violence that is not safe for work. It also contains a clip of a fictional character killing themselves.

It’s spooky season once more, and you know what that means: horror movies, slasher villains, and buckets of blood and gore. We’ve gotten a lot of horror franchises over the years, but only the classics endure, and the granddaddy of them is the Halloween franchise. While quite tame by today’s standards, the original was groundbreaking when it was release back in 1978, introducing the seemingly unkillable Michael Myers to silver screens everywhere, and beginning one of horror’s longest-running franchises.

Two years ago, David Gordon Green’s sequel trilogy – which acted as a direct followup to the original 1978 film – came to an end with Halloween Ends. Although the trilogy has gotten a mixed reception from fans, I think that, despite some narrative inconsistances, there’s a lot to like about the films. Here are eleven of my favorites:

11. Michael Meyers, Child Killer

While horror films can get away with a lot that other genres can’t, killing children is one of the things normally frowned upon. But Halloween, Kills, and Ends has no problem with Michael killing children.

While Michael was never even remotely a good guy, having him kill children in painful ways (I don’t even want to know what happened to the poor kid who wore that blood-drenched skull mask) shows viewers that he’s one killer who doesn’t mess around and is willing to kill anyone he comes across. Yet, even then he spares an infant in the first film, and we never find out why, further cementing that he’s a force of evil that doesn’t bother to explain itself to his victims.

10. Laurie and Michael’s Reunion

Throughout the first film of the sequel trilogy, we get to see how Laurie prepared herself for an inevitable rematch with Michael, and what follows isn’t so much a fight, but a one-man siege:

What I like about this even though Laurie has been preparing for this fight for years, she still can’t kill Michael with guns or brute force, and has to resort to trickery and help from her daughter and granddaughter, and even then it’s still not enough to kill Michael (who, at this point, is 61 years old).

One little thing that makes this scene even better is the moment when Laurie calls out for Ray: you can almost hear Michael thinking, “Wait a minute… I know that voice.” And then, turning his head, he sees Laurie through the door, recognizes the girl who got away so long ago, and decides to finish what he started back in ‘78.

9. Old Man Michael

One of my favorite things about the Halloween sequel trilogy is that the films acknowledge Michael’s age. Instead of trying to make him an eternally youthful man, Michael has aged to the point where he could collect social security checks and get senior discounts at the grocery store. By acknowledging that the bogeyman is getting old, it makes Michael’s kills all the more unique because we rarely get to see a senior-citizen slasher villain in stories, much less one who has three movies to play around in.

8. The Innocent Inmate’s Suicide

Though the trilogy is focused on horror and kills, it’s most emotional moment is when one of Michael’s fellow inmates from the asylum realizes that an enraged mob – who believes that he’s Michael – is going to tear him limb-from-limb. They can’t be stopped, they can’t be reasoned with, and the man – who is harmless and terrified – decides that the only thing he can do is jump to his death rather than face an even worse death at their hands.

Afterwords, the shock from all those present drives home how they’ve realized that their fear, paranoia, and desire to kill Michael have turned them into monsters on par with Michael himself.

7. Michael vs the Mob

The climax of ‘Kills’ sees Michael’s bloodiest, goriest, and highest body count in any of his films when he’s attacked by dozens of Haddonfield’s citizens.

He’s shot, clubbed, hit, beaten to the ground and seemingly defeated; it’d be a perfect ending to the series to have ordinary people unite and take Michael down for good… and then he lashes out, gets right back up, and kills everyone in the crowd.

Though the trilogy flip-flops on if Michael is supernatural or just a man, this scene proves that while Michael may look human, he is anything but.

6. Michael’s Evil Infecting Haddonfield

Though Michael is and always will be the face of the Halloween franchise, an idea that’s been brought up again and again is that evil always changes shape, and that killing Michael will mean that someone will eventually take his place. However, there’s another aspect of this that is subtly implied throughout the trilogy: that the evil within Michael corrupts everyone around it. When Michael returns to Haddonfield, the people there start to become paranoid and act violently to try and stop him, only succeeding in killing innocents and themselves, until Corey is seduced and corrupted in Ends, almost becoming Michael’s successor.

Michael may be a remorseless killer, but he is also a tumor that infects, corrupts, and destroys everyone around him. He’s a prime example of how evil can create a cycle of fear, death, and revenge that is almost impossible to stop.

5. Michael’s Supernatural Abilities

There’s been many theories on why Michael is so durable and hard to kill, and while Ends says that he’s just a man, I don’t think that’s true: Michael takes damage throughout the trilogy that would kill a man half his age and demonstrates endurance, durability, and strength beyond anything any normal person could endure: name any other man in his 60’s who can beat someone to death with their fists, he can crush a man’s head into pulp by smashing it with his boot, take a firehose of water to the chest without flinching, and hit someone with a baseball bat so hard that the bat itself is broken into two.

I’m of the theory that while Michael himself is human, the evil he contains makes him so much stronger and durable than any man could ever be, and while that power fades with age, it’s still always there, always driving him on, always giving him what he needs to continue his killing spree.

4. Michael vs the Firefighters

Michael gets into a lot of fights throughout the trilogy, but in terms of sheer ‘cool’ factor, this is my favorite:

Not only does this fight have a fantastic setting (taking place in front of a burning house), it demonstrates just how inhumanly strong Michael as as he takes down nine firemen who are armed with axes, firehoses, and even saws. But this fight is also a moment of awesome for the firefighters themselves: the moment they see Michael step outside, they instantly know who he is, but they don’t panic, run, or call for backup: instead, they stand their ground and fight. And while they all die, at least they go down fighting.

Fun fact: The house burning down during the scene? That was done for real, which meant that the filmmakers had about an hour to finish filming before the house collapsed. Thankfully, they did!

3. The Final Confrontation Between Laurie and Michael

The first sequel had a fight to the death between Laurie and Michael, but in my opinion, the final battle between the two in Ends is so much more gripping: Michael – now worn down from years of untreated injuries – comes to Laurie’s house and realizes she’s nearby. Laurie – who has given up on being a highly-trained survivalist – has no time to prepare as Michael comes for her, ending in a final, no-holds-barred beatdown between the two.

While the fight isn’t flashy or filled with fancy choreography, I love its atmosphere: this fight really feels like a final confrontation over 40 years in the making, both in-universe and out. Predator and Prey – both of whom are past their physical prime – fight to the death with nothing to lose and throw everything they have at each other, all backed with a near-apocalyptic soundtrack that makes things so much more intense. This is the last time Laurie and Michael will ever fight, and they give it their all. Many a fan has decried how Michael should have been able to kill her easily, but having Michael be old, worn out, and worn down from all the injuries he’s accumulated makes things more evenly matched between the two, and makes Laurie’s final victory all the more satisfying.

2. Michael is Killed For Good

There’s a saying in the world of comics: no one ever stays dead (except Uncle Ben), and the same can be said for slasher franchises: no matter how many times a villain is supposedly killed off for real, box office profits ensure he or she will always come back, no matter how convoluted the explanation may be. But while Michael will return for the inevitable reboot of the Halloween franchise, this timeline ends him in the most concrete way possible: by throwing his body into an industrial shredder and tearing him into bloody pulp.

There’s no way, NONE, that Michael can come back from this, and there’s one aspect of this scene that makes it so satisfying beyond seeing an evil man finally getting his just deserts: Throughout the series, Michael always comes back from every injury he takes. Whether it’s immediately, in a minute, a few hours, or even years, he always comes back, and I believe that Michael did not actually die in the fight with Laurie. Instead, he was so weakened from the loss of blood and his accumulated injuries that he couldn’t move, and while the evil possessing him was working to try and heal his body, the process couldn’t be completed when he was thrown into the shredder. Thus, Michael Myers truly died when the shredder tore him apart, and he felt all the pain that came with it: a far more just and deserved ending after all the lives Michael took, the fear he spread, and the suffering he inflicted on so many.

1. A Hopeful Ending

One reason I generally avoid horror films and franchises is the constant trope of downer endings where evil wins and nothing good comes from all the sacrifices, struggles, and suffering of the protagonists. Thankfully, Ends avoids this with a bittersweet, but hopeful ending:

After so many decades, Laurie finally kills Michael and frees both herself and Haddonfield from his reign of terror. While she cannot get back all the years and loved ones she’s lost, Laurie can now heal and create a new life for herself, complete with a new relationship with officer Hawkins. And best of all, in the final shots of the film, there’s no sound of Michael breathing. His mask remains, but the man – and the evil he carried – is truly gone, and it’s a great way to end the original Halloween timeline.

Favorite Moments: The End of ‘Dracula 3000’

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We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.

***

The Movie:

The scene, and why it’s great

One constant source of unintentional comedy in film is movies that are rushing to get to the end credits as quickly as possible. While great stories take the right amount of time – whether it’s a few minutes or a dozen – to wrap things up, say goodbye, and give characters closure, other stories say, ‘nah, screw that’ and just wrap things up in a few seconds. One of my favorite examples of this comes from ‘Dracula 3000,’ a story that re-imagines Bran Stoker’s timeless tale, but in space! Oh yeah, and Dracula is now called Orlock, and all vampires are now aliens who come from the planet Transylvania (yet dress up in the finest vampire apparel you can get from Spirit Halloween specially tailored for them by their fellow vampires)

As you might imagine, the film doesn’t have the best reputation. Most would say the best thing about it is the H.R. Giger inspired cover art, and maybe Coolio being in outer space. But for me, the best part is the final ten seconds. Behold:

I just love how, when the space station explodes with a cheesy stock explosion effect, it doesn’t even wait for the explosion to subside before starting the end credits. It’s like the filmmakers just gave up and wanted to go home, and the end result is several seconds of unintentional comedy genius that arguably redeems the whole experience. Well, that, and watching a man in a vampire costume running around a spaceship, getting his arm cut off, and giving one of the most amusing screams ever.

Further reading:

‘Dracula 3000’ at TVTropes.

SomethingAwful’s review of ‘Dracula 3000’

Film Theory: ‘Jaws’ Takes Place In The ‘Terminator’ Universe

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On July 17th, 1987, the world of cinema was changed forever as humanity witnessed the cinematic spectacle of Jaws: The Revenge, a film that thrilled moviegoers, took the world by storm, and became the first movie to earn over a billion dollars at the box office, win every academy award, and be heralded by many as the stunning and moving conclusion to the Jaws saga… or, at least, that probably happened in a parallel universe. In ours, Jaws: The Revenge was such a critical and financial flop that the Jaws franchise dropped dead, continuing only in the form of the occasional video game, LEGO set, and clothing line.

But what if I told you that the Jaws series, while seemingly dead, is actually part of a much larger narrative that has continued to this day?

What if I told you that the Jaws series was actually part of the Terminator film series?

But how could a movie series about a family fighting shark after shark after shark share a world with time-traveling killer robots, you might ask? Simple: My theory is that the events of the Jaws series chronicle Skynet dispatching robotic Terminator-sharks to kill Sean and Michael Brody, who will eventually grow up to become high-ranking lieutenants in the Resistance, and – supported and helped by their parents – become invaluable in humanity winning the war against the machines.

Impossible, you might say; there’s no evidence to support such a theory. But when you examine all four Jaws films, there is! This evidence can be grouped into three categories:

*The behavior of the sharks in the series

*The appearance of the sharks in the series

*Time travel erasing the events of the third film from existence.

Shark Behavior

Let’s begin with the behavior of the sharks in all four films, and how they reveal that all six sharks (yes, six) are Terminators.

Jaws

*When hunting sharks, Quint fires harpoons into their skin, which are then tethered to barrels, which serves to tire the sharks out and prevent them from diving. However, the film’s shark can dive down and stay underwater even with three barrels attached to it, something which even Quint admits is impossible. Could a normal shark do that? No… but a robot shark from the future can!

*At the film’s climax, Brody defeats the shark by shooting an air tank in its mouth, causing both to explode.

But as Mythbusters proved, this wouldn’t happen in real life. In a film that otherwise sticks to realism, the only logical conclusion is that Brody’s final shot hit a vital (and explosive) component of the shark’s power systems, causing it to blow up in a way similar to how the T-850’s fuel cell was damaged in Terminator 3, and subsequently exploded.

Jaws 2

*Early in the movie, the corpse of a killer whale is discovered with teeth marks that match that of a great white shark.

However, killer whales are natural predators of great white sharks due to their size, speed, and intelligence, and travel in pods, making it very unlikely (though not impossible) that the film’s shark could have killed this orca… unless it was a killer robot with an extremely powerful bite force that had to attack the orca to prevent damage to its outer skin that could reveal its metallic interior and blow its cover.

*The shark survives being next to an exploding boat. At such close range, a normal shark would have been blown up or killed by the resulting shockwave. Yet, this one survives without so much as a scratch.

*In perhaps the most irrefutable piece of evidence that the shark is a terminator, notice how when it tries to eat Michael, its metallic innards can clearly be seen!

*The shark is strong enough to not only stop a helicopter from taking off from the water, but is also able to overturn it.

*The shark is defeated by a massive jolt of electricity.

While this would kill an ordinary shark, it also makes sense that a Terminator could be killed by a massive, sustained current of electricity. While this has never been shown on-screen, The T-X in Terminator 3, and the T-800 in Terminator: Genysis were momentarily incapacitated when exposed to an electric current. In Jaws 2, it’s conceivable that a stronger and more sustained current would short-circuit and destroy the terminator trying to kill Chief Brody.

Jaws 3

*Compared to the sharks in the previous two films, the sharks in this movie display an increasingly mechanical, non-lifelike appearance, something consistent with a robotic shark covered with a crude rubber skin.

*The smaller shark (a Terminator sent back with a larger unit to infiltrate small areas) is a very weak model; not only is unable to kill its chosen targets when it could have easily done so, but upon being stabbed by an incredibly lucky hit from Kay into a motor servo, the shark is paralyzed and unable to do anything.

Later, the continued exposure to salt water finally short-circuits the Terminator’s CPU and it becomes inoperable.

*When approaching the underwater control room, the main shark freezes up, appearing to glide into the windows, only opening its mouth at the last second. A normal, organic shark wouldn’t try to ram a building, much less just glide towards it, but a robot that’s glitching and experiencing mechanical problems certainly would.

*When stuck inside the control room after crashing through the glass, the shark doesn’t suffocate; Great White Sharks need to continuously keep moving in order to get oxygen through their gills, and since the shark can move around and attack for a few minutes without breathing (as well as swim backwards, which it did inside the filtration pipe, which is enormously difficult for a real Great White, even more so when the creature is suffocating), it is clearly a non-organic organism.

Jaws The Revenge

*In the opening scene, the shark purposefully damages a buoy to lure Sean out to the area, where it then attacks and kills him.

Seeing as Great Whites cannot lay traps for humans, the only way this makes sense if if the shark was a robot with knowledge that Sean was a police officer, and thus likely to be called out to deal with a damaged buoy.

*When Ellen, Michael, and his family fly to the Bahamas, it’s commonly assumed that the shark pursues them, a journey of about 1,359 miles, in a day or two. Even for a Terminator with nigh-infinite stamina, crossing that distance in that time is impossible. Thus, I would like to propose that there are not one, but two Terminator sharks in the film: One at Amity, and one in the Bahamas: when the Brody family leaves Amity, the Terminator stationed there (who got a visual ID on Michael, Ellen, Carla, and Thea) dispatches a message to its peer in the Bahamas, who is then ready and waiting when Michael and the others arrive.

*In the Bahamas, the shark repeatedly targets the Brody family and ignores other humans, even when it would be easy to kill them:

-The shark swims next to Jake’s minisub and, upon realizing that he’s not Michael, ignores him. Later, when Michael is piloting the same submarine, the shark immediately goes after him.

-When the shark pursues Michael through the ship, it rams a ladder at one point, briefly exposing it’s mechanical innards.

-The shark goes after Thea on the banana boat, but terminates the wrong person by mistake.

-The shark attacks Hoagie on his boat, but upon realizing that he’s not a Brody, lets him go.

-The shark attacks Jake and injures him, but, once again, notices that he isn’t a designated target and lets him go.

*Michael’s plan of using electrical impulses to disrupt the shark’s brain probably wouldn’t work in real life (I couldn’t find any information online if it would, so I’m leaning towards no), making the scene of the shark hopping around and roaring impossible under any circumstance.

However, the scene does work if the pulse is scrambling the Terminator’s CPU and internal circuitry, causing it to malfunction and act erratically, including making the aforementioned roaring; though rarely seen in the Terminator films, Terminators do have the ability to vocally mimic voices and presumably sounds. Perhaps the roar was on file if it really wanted to scare its victims.

*The shark has a heartbeat that can be picked up using sensors. However, the heartbeat momentarily stops just before Jake is attacked. Can an organic shark momentarily stop its heart? No. Can a terminator with an artificial heart do the same? Yes.

*When impaled by the boat at the climax, the shark explodes. Again, impossible for a real shark, but possible if Ellen hit an explosive component of the Terminator’s innards, like how Martin destroyed the Terminator in the first film.

The Shark’s Appearances

Now to the second piece of evidence: the shark’s appearance in all four films: Where T-800 and subsequent Terminators have perfect organic coverings, Terminator sharks… don’t.

A Real Great White

(Picture from Terry Gross at Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5)

Skynet Great Whites

Why is this? Having placed a priority on infiltrating human resistance groups on land, Skynet has little need to use aquatic Terminators, so much less effort is spent developing a perfect appearance for them. While they do have skin, blood, and internal organs to allow them to pass as sharks, they become noticeably more fake-looking as the series goes on, suggesting that Skynet is resorting to rush jobs in a desperate attempt to go after the Brody family before its defeat at the hands of the Resistance.

The Third Film Never Happening

While all four films take place in the same continuity, Sean and Michael look completely different in Revenge compared to the third film, complete with different careers (Mike was an engineer for Seaworld, but is then a marine research scientist). Why is that? Because Skynet managed to alter the timeline at one point strongly enough that the events of the third film never happened, erasing it from existence, and subsequently altering history so that Michael and Sean aged differently and followed different paths in life.

The idea of the past being altered to cause subsequent stories never take place has happened numerous Terminator films; Genysis erased Judgement Day, Rise of the Machines, and Salvation from continuity, while Dark Fate ignores every film that takes place after Judgement Day.

Problems With The Theory:

Despite the three lines of evidence mentioned above, there are still problems that need to be addressed:

1. Why didn’t Skynet just send back T-800’s to take out the Brody siblings like it did in the Terminator films?

-We don’t know how many T-800 and humanoid Terminators Skynet has. We also don’t know the energy requirements on sending a single infiltrator unit back in time, but considering how Skynet has sent only a handful throughout the films, it can be deduced that sending Terminators through time costs considerable resources, and thus Skynet can’t send tens of thousands through history to wipe out the Connors and their lieutenants.

Though they are valuable targets, the Brody family are not as high a priority as Sarah and John Connor. By wiping out the leader of the Resistance, Skynet has a much higher chance of winning its war against humanity, with everyone else in Connor’s line of command being secondary targets at best. Thus, it makes more sense to send advanced infiltrator units after the Connors, and less-advanced units like the Terminator sharks after everyone else.

2. Why do the Terminators in the first three films go after random people instead of exclusively targeting the Brodys?

-Skynet knows that the Brody family lived on Amity island, but because of records being lost on Judgement Day, Skynet does not know exactly where they lived or what they looked like. Thus, because it can’t spare valuable T-800’s to go after them, and can’t send cruder models like the T-600 (who would be easily detectable), the only logical choice is to dispatch multiple Terminator sharks through time to kill the Brodys, attacking people who fit the description of their targets (a middle-aged woman, man, and two adolescent boys) in the hope of chomping down on their targets. This is averted in the fourth film, where, as noted above, the first Terminator in Amity manages to get visual identification of Michael, Ellen, and Thea, and sends that information to its counterpart in the Bahamas.

3. If the shark in the first film is trying to kill the Brody family, why doesn’t the shark just ram the Orca and quickly kill everyone aboard?

-I admit that there is no easy answer to this problem. Perhaps due to being manufactured relatively quickly and being nowhere near as advanced as their landlocked peers, the Terminator sharks might be vulnerable to the effects of salt water and subsequently find their CPUs glitching out at random moments, forcing them to retreat in order to try and correct the problem, only returning when they are back to 100% operational efficiency. Thus, the reason the Terminator in Jaws doesn’t just ram the boat and sink it instantly is because these glitches are happening more and more frequently, forcing it to retreat more often. This also explains why the Terminator swims right by Michael in the first film when it could have easily killed him.

Conclusion

While the aforementioned problem does put a dent in this theory (along with other little nitpicks, such as the Terminator killing a fish for no reason in Jaws 3), adding up the three bodies of evidence still produces a very strong case that the Jaws and Terminator films take place in the same universe. Though silly, this theory has the advantage of retroactively helping improve the quality of the sequels by resolving plot holes, production errors, and the nonsensical idea of sharks seeking revenge on specific individuals (while roaring).

But most importantly, the sequels – long-seen as inferior and unnecessary followups to the original film – can now be seen as important parts of a larger, two-franchise narrative, where a family unknowingly fights off and defeats the agents of a malevolent supercomputer that wants to kill them before they can help save humanity. While Martin and Sean are ultimately killed (indirectly, in Martin’s instance), Michael and Ellen make it through and survive to one day join the Resistance and save the human race. And when viewed in this light, the Jaws series is given something it hasn’t had since 1987: a fitting and satisfying conclusion that ties everything together, and ends the saga of the Brody family on a high note.

Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, but I review it with Morbius Memes (Spoilers!)

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I loved the part where Godzilla said, “It’s nap time!” and took three naps during the movie.

I was so touched when that veterinary guy said, “It’s veterinary time!” and did dental work on Kong.

I also liked the part where the tree said, “It’s tree time!” and totally ate that guy.

I was so touched when Kong said, “It’s dinner time!” and gave mini-Kong some Purina sea serpent chow.

I loved the part where the Iwi said, “…” and stared ominously at everyone.

I cheered when mini-Kong said, “It’s murdrin’ time!” and murdered his fellow homicidal rage-apes with really big rocks.

I especially loved the part where Mothra said, “It’s Mothra time!” and Mothrad’ all over those homicidal rage apes in the crystal kingdom in the center of the Earth while gravity was cancelled due to pouring red liquid inside another liquid which turned some crystals on.

But most of all, I cheered when Kong said, “It’s democracy time!” and brought democracy to all the homicidal rage apes in their lava prison in the center of the Earth after killing the Skar King like Jason did to that girl in the movie where he went to space. At least, I think Kong brought democracy to the rage apes. America!

Truly, this was a movie of all time. 10,000,000 stars out of 10.

One Way To Make Terminators Scary Again

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One common critique of the Terminator franchise is that after the first two films, each subsequent terminator model (the T-X, T-RIP, T-3000, and REV-9) feels less threatening despite being more technologically advanced than the T-800 and the T-1000.

Why is this? Perhaps it’s because in the first two films, the characters are under-equipped to take on the terminators, and even those who are trained and know about their opponents (Kyle, the T-800) are aware that they aren’t going to win in a one-on-one fight and act accordingly. Their goal is to stay alive and not fight unless there is absolutely no other choice. They’re underdogs, and there’s a very real sense of danger every time they face the T-800 and the T-1000.

Starting with Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, though, the characters become more willing to fight and are better equipped: in T-3, John, Kate, and the T-850 gain a large cache of weapons. In Salvation, humanity knows about terminators and has the weaponry to take them on. In Genysis, Sarah and Pops have built up an arsenal of weapons over several years and are unfazed to take on the T-3000. And in Dark Fate, Sarah and Grace are battle-hardened warriors unafraid to take on the Rev-9. As a result, the sense of danger is largely gone. The underdogs are no longer underdogs.

There are many ways for the Terminator series to make the terminators frightening again, but I think one important lesson is to take inspiration from, of all places, 1993’s Jurassic Park: the park’s game warden, Robert Muldoon was a big-game hunter armed with shotguns and decades of hunting experience, but even he was scared of facing velociraptors, only doing so when he had to. If the Terminator franchise gives its protagonists and robotic killers the same relationship, that can help restore the sense of danger and terror that’s faded since 1991… that, and stopping the terminators from just throwing everyone around instead of snapping necks and punching out hearts.

Resident Evil: The Films Ranked

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To close out my analysis and summary of the Resident Evil movies, here’s my own personal ranking of each film in the series, starting from the least enjoyable and working its way up to the most enjoyable.

6. Resident Evil

It has three good scenes and two great musical pieces, but no amount of production values, music, or cool sequences can save a generic zombie film with the Resident Evil brand slapped onto it at the last minute. This is a Resident Evil film in name only, and is the most disappointing overall.

Favorite Scene: The laser hallway

Favorite Shot:

5. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

The Final Chapter feels like the first draft of a script written by someone who wants to end the series on their terms without caring about what came before. Not only is the story filled with retcons that don’t work, it also suffers from disposable characters and awful editing that makes the movie physically painful to watch. However, the film does have some good ideas, some gorgeous post-apocalyptic scenery, and the surprisingly effective ending saves the movie from being a complete failure.

Favorite Scene: The ending, where Alice is given Alicia’s memories and sets out to continue fighting the undead.

Favorite Shot:

4. Resident Evil: Apocalypse

Of all six films, Apocalypse is the one that feels like the most faithful adaptation of the games, due to following the basic story of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, complete with corresponding characters, monsters, and Nemesis himself coming to life via fantastic practical effects. Plus, LJ – while a walking stereotype – is a welcome source of comic relief. Unfortunately, Alice is at her worst here, acting like a smug high schooler who thinks she’s the toughest girl around and doesn’t give a shit about anyone but herself, going out of her way to steal everyone’s thunder for her own glory.

Favorite Scene: Nemesis attacking the STARS members and sparing LJ

Favorite Shot:

3. Resident Evil: Retribution

Retribution is in the unenviable position of being a commercial for The Final Chapter, and rewatching it knowing that all of the plot points it sets up will never be fulfilled makes it a bittersweet experience. However, it does has a lot of fun action sequences, the greatest variety of locations from any of the films, and the ending is still the best in the series.

Favorite Scene: That awesome cliffhanger ending

Favorite Shot:

2. Resident Evil: Extinction

The most original film of the series, Extinction is a satisfying, post-apocalyptic, Mad Max-style daylight horror film set almost entirely in a desert wasteland, a setting that has never appeared in the games. Coupled with good action sequences, a fantastic third-act fight against Dr. Issacs, and a great soundtrack, it’s a fun film that succeeds at carving out its own identity while staying true to the Resident Evil spirit.

Favorite Scene: Carlos’ sacrifice

Favorite Shot:

1. Resident Evil: Afterlife

The best film of the series is a blast, starting with an exciting assault on Umbrella headquarters before turning into a perfectly-paced siege film with plenty of memorable action sequences, including a fight against the Axeman, who’s my favorite monster from the games, and like Nemesis, was brought to life perfectly, and finishing with a duel against Albert Wesker, the most memorable character in the series. While the cliffhanger ending does prevent the movie from being self-contained and acting as a satisfying series finale, the rest of the film is a great watch, and I always enjoy watching it again and again.

Favorite Scene: The battle between Claire and the Axeman, which is my favorite scene of the entire series. The water, that massive axe, the music, all of it is just perfect!

Favorite Shot:

What We Can Learn From The Resident Evil Series: A Summary

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Imagine that the year is 2001, and you’re off to see Peter Jackson’s adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. You love the books and can’t wait to see them brought to life on the big screen! You get your popcorn, take your seat, eagerly wait as the lights go down… and then watch a movie that follows a bunch of characters you’ve never heard of as they infiltrate a fortress never mentioned in the books. None of Tolkien’s characters appear, and while a few monsters do menace the heroes (orcs, uruk-hai, and a warg), the story ultimately has nothing to do with his books.

How would you feel after the movie was over? Probably infuriated that you got something that has a passing resembles its source material but is more interested in showcasing the writer’s own ideas than the story you paid to see. That’s what the Resident Evil films feel like: a series of movies that had a mountain of material to take inspiration from, but chose to go its own way for better or worse. And while the films were critical failures, they were financial successes, going on to become – for a time – the most successful live-action video game movie franchise, and the most financially successful horror film series in history.

But no matter their financial and critical success, the Resident Evil films were always destined to be B movies meant to provide lots of action and thrills with little to no philosophical musings about the human condition or discussions of morality. And by that criteria, the films largely delivered on what they set out to do, thanks to three things:

1. All the films have simple stories with clear, achievable goals for the characters.

2. They take the basic idea of the games (zombies get lose and have to be stopped before they infest the world) and expand on it (zombies get lose, take over the world, and have to be stopped before the human race is wiped out) in a way that feels true to the spirit of the series, allowing fans to see characters and monsters from said games in new and unique scenarios.

3. They have lots of unique action sequences featuring monsters and characters from the games, sometimes re-created shot for shot.

Yet, for all their success, the films don’t quite reach the height of what they could have been; they suffer from an overarching story that feels disjointed and held together with staples, duct-tape, and Elmer’s school glue when viewed back to back, due to said story being made up film-by-film as the series went along. And while all the elements for great action movies are present, the biggest obstacle holding the films back boils down to one thing: Alice, the main character.

For all the anecdotes listed above, the Resident Evil films have another, unofficial distinction: they’re the most expensive fan-fiction story of all time in that they follow an original character throughout her adventures in the Resident Evil universe. And like poorly-written fan-fiction, said character is a black hole sue whom the entire universe revolves around. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is either:

1. Trying to kill or capture her.

2. Taking orders from her or trying to save her, often at great risk to themselves.

3. Admiring how awesome she is.

Furthermore, Alice is extra-special in-universe because she’s one of only two people in the world to successfully bond with the T-virus without any side effect, the other being Angela from the second film. But then Alice gets a one-up on Angela by becoming the only person on Earth to get psychic powers, and then she gets an army of clones who also has psychic powers, and then she defeats the Umbrella corporation and saves the human race from extinction, sacrificing her life in the process, only to return to life, making her a modern-day Jesus (if Jesus went around killing zombies with guns and psychic powers, that is).

But did you notice something about that description? The established characters from the games – Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, Claire Redfield, Carlos, Albert Wesker, etc. – have almost no part to play in the fight for humanity. While they may shoot guns and kill zombies, they’re reduced to supporting characters, only existing to help Alice accomplish her quest. If they get a moment to do something cool that has nothing to do with Alice, she’ll swoop in and steal that moment (see: Jill trying to save Becky, Claire trying to defeat the Axeman, etc.).

While she has her sympathetic moments, and ultimately goes from being an unlikable jerk to a heroic clone trying to save the human race, there’s no escaping the fact that Alice is the biggest problem with the Resident Evil films. If she had been replaced with, say, Jill Valentine, and not gotten any special powers, we would have gotten a series that went like this:

Jill Valentine – a cop with the Raccoon City police department – teams up with her allies to fight off a zombie apocalypse, only to learn that their employer, the Umbrella corporation, is responsible for the outbreak. Armed with nothing but guns, their wits, and their determination, Jill, Claire, Chris, Barry, Carlos, Nicholai, Sergei, Leon, Ada, and newcomers Luther, LJ, Rain, Chase, and Betty roam the apocalyptic wastelands, trying to stop Umbrella and save the human race, eventually having to team with their arch-nemesis Albert Wesker in a final, desperate assault that leaves them just narrowly managing to save the human race and destroying Umbrella once and for all, allowing Jill and her friends to begin rebuilding a ruined world.

Doesn’t that sound like a great story? If we had gotten that, it’s my belief that the series would have been better recieved by both fans and critics. But instead, it was foiled by a newcomer who shoves everyone else aside so she can be the messiah. And in that lies the one lesson the ‘Resident Evil’ films offers to writers:

When adapting a franchise from one medium to another, stay true to the spirit of the source material while keeping the focus on established characters instead of newcomers.

While things will inevitably be changed in any adaptation, writers need to still present the story fans come to see. Tell the story from the original book, show, or game, respect said story, and use new ideas and new characters to compliment and support the original, not overshadow it.

Viewing the Resident Evil films years after the series concluded was a fascinating experience for me: I can’t think of any other series adaptation that has good production values, a real sense that the filmmakers were trying hard and learning from their mistakes, but still runs the gauntlet from awful to fantastic (in a B movie way). Most frustrating is that there was always the feeling that the films were always a few inches away from reaching their full potential, and it does happen a few times! Most of the action sequences – save those from the last film – are a lot of fun, the post-apocalyptic world is well done, the monsters are mostly great, and, despite all the changes made, it really does feel like a Resident Evil story come to life… it’s just not the one we should have gotten.

In the end, despite its missteps, the Resident Evil film series mostly accomplishes what it set out to do, in my opinion. It started weak, gradually got better, reached its zenith, then fell flat on its face at the end, but managed to get to its feet and cross the finish line. If you’re a fan of action movies, zombies, horror, and video games, I believe they’re still worth a watch. But most of all, they’re an important reminder that when we, as writers, are adapting someone else’s work, we’re stewards for that story. It is up to us to faithfully adapt it as best we can and respect it, even when we have to make changes. If we deliver a faithful and respectful adaptation, we’ll not only delight long-term fans, but introduce others to a world that they’ll want to explore, guiding them towards the original books, games,and stories, ensuring that a beloved story will earn a new generation of fans and be kept alive for years to come.

What We Can Learn From The Resident Evil Film Series: Part 6 – ‘The Final Chapter’

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It’s the evening of January 26th, 2017. Five years have passed since ‘Resident Evil: Retribution,’ and two friends and I leave the theater, where we were the only people to watch the premiere of ‘Resident Evil: The Final Chapter.” As we enter the lobby, one of the theater employees asks us how it was. I tell him about the film’s ludicrous mistakes, continuity errors, and how it wants us to care about all the newcomers, like Bearded Man, Blue Shirt Girl, That Guy With The Skull Sword, etc., and how it so desperately wanted me to feel sad when Blue Shirt Girl is chopped into mincemeat via a giant fan, despite the fact that she had been on screen for maybe two minutes and I knew nothing about her.

The longer I talk, I realize just how absurd everything is that’s coming out of my mouth to the point where I laugh at realizing I’ve watched one of the worst films in recent memory. Now, having watched the film for the first time in six years, I’m surprised to find that the passage of time has softened my views and made me realize that ‘The Final Chapter’ isn’t bad: it’s hilariously awful.

Join me now as we take a look at the comedic masterpiece that is ‘Resident Evil: The Final Chapter.’

What does the film do well?

It has a cool armored vehicle

Post-apocalyptic films frequently show humanity creating wicked-looking vehicles to help them survive in the wastes, and ‘The Final Chapter’ features a particularly cool mobile command tank equipped with missile launchers, miniguns, hidden compartments for storing motorcycles, nasty spikes, and the ability to communicate with Umbrella headquarters. Granted, all this firepower can’t kill someone driving away from it in a straight line, but it’s still a cool design that almost single-handily destroys the tower Claire and her fellow survivors have taken in, and is a worthy adversary for them to take on in a fight.

It has two memorable villains

Despite being sliced to bits in ‘Extinction,’ we get not one, but two Dr. Issacs in ‘The Final Chapter’: One is a clone who’s an insane religious fanatic, and the other is is the original Issacs, the calm, collected CEO of Umbrella ultimately responsible for the T-virus outbreak, making him the main villain of the entire saga… and unlike other greedy CEO’s, he’s a shockingly good fighter who can hold his own against Alice thanks to some nifty implanted computer technology that lets him dodge bullets, predict what his opponent is going to do, and even heal him after a grenade blasts out his torso, and would have killed her if she hadn’t used her wits to win.

It has the triple-barreled shotgun from the video games

The post-apocalyptic world is a great place to utilize awesome weapons, and what’s better than a sawed-off shotgun? A sawed-off shotgun with three barrels! It may not survive past the movie’s halfway point, but it’s still a cool gun that gets a decent amount of use.

It goes back to where the saga started

‘The Final Chapter’ takes place almost entirely within Raccoon City and the Hive, the locations of the first two movies. For the final film in the series, coming back to where the story began not only gives the story a chance to revisit old locations and reveal new areas within them (such as the cryogenic chamber and that sweet office located beneath the Hive), but to also let the audience reflect on how much has happened since Alice woke up in that shower stall so many years ago, and how she’s changed since her quest to destroy Umbrella began.

It brings back one of the characters from the previous films

Aside from Alice, Wesker, and Issacs, the only returning character from the previous films is Claire Redfield, who is now the leader of the survivors based in Raccoon City. She may not have much to do other than run, shoot guns, and accompany Alice into the Hive, but it’s nice that Alice gets at least one ally from the previous films to help her out, including helping her take on Issacs at the climax.

It gives the Umbrella Corporation a clever motive for everything they’ve done

The biggest revelation of ‘The Final Chapter’ is that instead of the viral outbreak being the result of corporate sabotage and greed, the outbreak was done on purpose: After realizing that Earth was heading towards global catastrophe due to climate change and societal breakdown, Issacs decided to release the virus to ‘cleanse’ the planet so that Umbrella could repopulate it afterwords.

While it may fall apart upon closer inspection (see the entry below on retcons), this revelation not only shows how cold and heartless the Umbrella corporation really is, but also reveals that Issacs is the main villain of the entire series, a man responsible for the murder of billions of people. And shockingly, the plan is… logical. While it’s a horrific, immoral plan that no sane person would dare go through with, it does make sense on a cold, logical level. The best villain plans are ones where the viewer pauses and wonders if they might have a point, and this revelation is an excellent example.

It concludes the series, yet still has an open ending

Unlike so many other franchises (especially horror) that claim to have final chapters, ‘The Final Chapter’ actually follows through on this promise in a clever way: Alice manages to release the airborne antivirus, which will cover the globe and destroy all the zombies, monsters, and undead, saving humanity. The only problem is that it will take years for this to happen, giving Alice plenty of time to continue roaming the earth and killing monsters.

This is a great example of the ‘And the Adventure Continues’ trope: It concludes the series’ story, but lets our imaginations run wild at all the adventures Alice will have as she roams the world (assuming she isn’t eaten by those three bat-things seconds after the screen cuts to black).

What could have been done better?

It could have edited the film so it didn’t look like a 2000’s music video

Here on Imperfect Glass, the focus is primarily on story and characters instead of production values and the physical aspects of filmmaking, but I’ll make an exception to say that the editing on ‘Resident Evil: The Final Chapter’ is awful.

If there was ever a film to showcase why ultra-fast editing with handheld camera shots should be permanently done away with, ‘The Final Chapter’ is it.

It could have not made so many retcons (that don’t work)

Beyond the awful editing, ‘The Final Chapter’ is most notable for featuring numerous retcons that alter the saga’s storyline all the way back to the first movie. While retcons are not a bad thing in and of themselves and can add new and exciting ideas to enhance past events, none of ‘The Final Chapter’s retcons work. At all.

1. In ‘Retribution,’ the Red Queen had taken over Umbrella, gone homicidal, and wanted to wipe out all life on Earth. But in ‘The Final Chapter,’ she still works for Umbrella and wants to help Alice save the last remaining human survivors by bringing Umbrella down.

2. The Red Queen states that she cannot harm an employee of the Umbrella Corporation, forgetting that she killed everyone in the Hive in the first movie. (maybe they were independent contractors?)

3. In ‘Retribution,’ Wesker made it clear that he broke Alice out of Umbrella Prime in order to give her back her psychic powers so she could help him defeat the Red Queen and save humanity. But in this movie, the Red Queen tells Alice that Wesker only pretended to give Alice back her powers, and that his plan was actually a trap in order to kill her and everyone else.

This plan makes no sense. If Wesker really wanted to kill Alice and everyone else who could stop him, then here’s what he needed to do:

-Go with his strike team to Umbrella Prime.

-Plant the explosives and follow team into Umbrella Prime.

-At the first opportunity, abandon the strike team and head back to the surface.

-Detonate the explosives to destroy the facility and kill everyone in it, including Alice.

-Head back to the Hive, enjoy alcoholic beverages, and play Mario Kart 64 to pass the time while waiting for the T-virus to finish wiping out all life on Earth.

4. The aforementioned retcon of Umbrella purposefully releasing the T-virus is a great idea… but the first film clearly shows that it was released in the Hive as an act of sabotage, and subsequently released into the open by idiotic Umbrella operatives. ‘Extinction’ showed that Umbrella was trying to find a way to control the zombies and stop the outbreak instead of just waiting for the virus to do its thing, ‘Afterlife’ had Umbrella kidnapping survivors to use them as test subjects to make even more powerful zombies, and ‘Retribution’ had the Red Queen-controlled corporation trying to wipe out all life on Earth (despite the Red Queen wanting to save humanity).

To be generous, it is possible that while Umbrella high command knew of the plan, their underlings and armies of clones didn’t and were trying to contain and control it, but why make all those clones in the first place? And why would Issacs make not one, but two clones of himself? And if Wesker is part of Umbrella high command, why would he stay awake for the apocalypse and run around instead of staying asleep with everyone else? Wouldn’t Issacs have wanted to keep him under instead of risking Wesker betraying him?

5. The second film established that Charles Ashford created the virus to save his little girl from dying, but this film says that it was actually a man named James Marcus who discovered it to save his daughter from dying. So who was it that ultimately created the T-Virus?

6. Alice says that the US government nuked Raccoon City when it was clearly the Umbrella Corporation that fired the nuke in an attempt to keep the virus under control (and again, if they had purposefully released the virus, why bother trying to contain it?).

7. It’s stated that the T-virus is airborne and infected the world in days after escaping Raccoon City… but at the end of the film, it’s said that it will take the antivirus years to spread to every corner of the globe via the same method. Yes, it traveled faster with jet planes, but it’s still airborne. Furthermore, it’s been established in every film so far that the T-virus is spread via bites from the undead; if the T-Virus is airborne, everyone in the series should have been infected by the end of the second movie and turned into zombies.

It could have brought back the characters from the cliffhanger ending of the last movie and removed all the new ones

Arguably the most exciting idea from the end of ‘Retribution’ was the thought that Wesker, Alice, Leon, Jill, and Ada would join forces to save humanity in ‘The Final Chapter’ after an awesome fight at the White House.

It doesn’t happen, and the battle we want to see is already over when the film starts. Like ‘Alien 3’ and ‘Terminator: Dark Fate,’ which both killed off some of their most important characters in the opening minutes, ‘The Final Chapter’ kills Leon, Jill, and Ada (and presumably, Becky) before ‘The Final Chapter’ even starts. They’re never seen, never mentioned, and Alice doesn’t even mourn Becky, who she fought so hard to save in ‘Retribution.’

Now, while killing off beloved side characters can and often is a bad idea, it can work: Focusing a story entirely on the main character and their attempts to overcome grief and loss while trying to save others is a powerful story idea and give us even more reasons for us to care for them. That could have worked with ‘The Final Chapter,’ had it focused mainly on Alice. Problem is, the film introduces a horde of new characters to work with Alice, and none of them are memorable. We have:

1. Doc, the group’s medic, Claire’s boyfriend, and a traitor who works for Umbrella

2. Post Apocalyptic Leather Guy Who Hates Everyone And Has A Goofy Skull Sword

3. Blue-Shirt Girl

4. Bearded Guy Who Never Talks

5. Guy From Issac’s Tank

6. That Other Guy

The climax of a story is not the place to introduce hordes of new characters: You don’t have time to do it well enough to get the audience to care about them, and the purpose of a climax is to see the characters who have gone on a journey reach its end. We’ve invested time following them and want to see how their story ends. Introducing one or two new characters can be pulled off (Denethor from The Return of the King, for example), but writers need to focus on resolving the journey of those who have come this far.

It could have made Wesker the main villain

As if things couldn’t be more disappointing, Wesker, the suave, smug, and oh so fun to watch villain from ‘Afterlife’ and ‘Retribution,’ is butchered in ‘The Final Chapter.’ Instead of being the ultimate bad guy who everyone has to work together to even stand a chance of defeating, he’s an incompetent adversary who spends the movie giving the Red Queen orders, preparing alcoholic drinks like a James Bond villain, and eventually resorts to waking Issacs up to stop Alice, all because Wesker failed to close a door hours before Alice got even close to Raccoon City.

And then there’s Wesker’s death. In the games, it takes Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar fighting Wesker to the point of exhaustion inside an erupting volcano in Africa before using two rockets to blow off his head while Wesker was submerged waist-deep in lava to finally kill him for good.

In ‘The Final Chapter,’ Wesker bleeds to death after his foot is cut off by a door.

It’s hard to imagine Wesker dying any more pathetically, short of choking to death on a pretzel; as a refresher, Wesker survived getting his brains blown out in ‘Afterlife,’ and then survived an explosion powerful enough to destroy a city-sized subterranean complex. Having him die in such a laughable manner is insulting to the character. To be fair, killing off such a powerful villain is always a hard task, doubly so if writers have had them survive impossible odds in the past. But while a memorable death scene can be the most satisfying moment of a story, a laughable death scene is memorable, too, but for all the wrong reasons.

It could have had a more memorable final boss fight

The finale of ‘The Final Chapter’ has Alice fighting Issacs to get the antivirus, then running to the surface to release it. While it works fine as it is, it would have been more gripping if Issacs had been replaced by Wesker, and their final fight wasn’t in the laser hallway, but something similar to how Wesker is fought and killed in Resident Evil 5. While putting a volcano underneath Raccoon City wouldn’t make sense, having it take place in an area similar to one of the final boss fights of Resident Evil 6 would work equally as well.

Plus, if the film had brought back Chris, it would have been an opportunity for him to punch a boulder into lava. Goofy, yes, but it would have been a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. But most likely for budget reasons, the final fight is a simple fistfight in the laser hallway from the first film. It works, but feels like a missed opportunity.

Conclusion

Even now, all these years later, it’s still shocking to see how the final chapter of Anderson’s saga fell flat on its face. While it does have some good ideas, and manages to have a good final few minutes, it’s not enough to save the film as a whole. But what about the series as a whole? Join us next time when we examine all six films at once and see what conclusions can be made about the series and the lessons it offers to writers about writing video game movies.

Perfect Moments: ‘A Christmas Miracle’

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Once in a while, you come across a moment in a story that is so perfect that it stays in with you for years, or even a lifetime. These are moments that, in my opinion, are flawless; perfect gems of storytelling that cannot be improved in any way, and are a joy to treasure and revisit again and again.

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The Video:

NOTE: This video has language that is not safe for work.

Why it’s Perfect

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone, and as we all settle down into our post-dinner comas, we dream of finally being able to put up all the Christmas decorations once again.

But with Christmas comes something else: something malevolent, malicious, and that infects the soul. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, you cannot escape it. But no one who works in our stores can escape it, and they will spend the next month fighting off the madness that will attempt to destroy us all. Please spare a moment to thank them for their sacrifice so that we can continue to get the consume goods we need while they struggle not to go insane.

What is this evil? Well, just watch the video and find out. And if you have scars from having to wrestle with this madness then you’ll hopefully get a laugh out of it like I did.