shadowkat: (Default)
shadowkat ([personal profile] shadowkat) wrote2023-12-30 11:53 pm

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Made it roughly half-way through Marvel's Secret Invasion on Disney +, which got horrible reviews from just about everyone? It's filmed mostly at night - so I kind of have to watch it at night.

Also have made it roughly eighty percent of the way through White Lotus on HBO Max. Which much like Saltburn, also borrows heavily from Patricia Highsmith, explaining why Wales loved it, and I don't. Wales adores Highsmith's dark satire, I find Highsmith kind of a slog. (Hmmm, I should recommend Saltburn to Wales.)

Anyhow, Secret Invasion is slightly better than expected - mainly because of the stellar cast. I'd watch Olivia Coleman, Ben Mendleson and Samuel L Jackson read the phone book. But it does suffer from serious pacing problems, also it kills off not one but two favorite female characters unexpectedly. Which I think was a mistake. (Not Coleman, at least not so far.) It keeps losing my attention, or focus, and that's due to pacing issues. (I get bored). Way too many repetitive conversations, and speechifying. I do not need to hear for the upteenth time that the human race is a bunch of war mongering idiots - who fight over dumb things. I know. I agree with you. Move on.

However, there is a nice exchange between Talos (the nice Skrull leader) and Fury on a train. It's in the second episode.

Fury: You mean to tell me that there are a million of you wandering around? How?
Talos: Well, I sent out the call and invited them all -
Fury: Who gave you permission to do that?
Talos: I figure we can peacefully share this planet with you, and co-exist.
Fury: Whatever gave you that idea? Have you learned nothing? Humans can barely co-exist and tolerate each other. They fight over everything, and can't often be in the same room with each other without getting into a fight. Have you missed the fact that we're constantly at war with each other? The last thing we need is to add another species to the mix! We can't get along with each other, what makes you think we'd get along with you??

Which is a great exchange. It's just that they keep repeating it in various and sundry ways in each episode, five or six times, because the writers seem to think the audience hasn't gotten the point? We have. I bet the actors got tired of stating after a while? I wish they just limited it to that speech. That one was good and kind of humorous. I really could have done without Gravick's hypocritical take on it - yes, yes, we know the bad guy is a hypocritical terrorist. Can we kill him already? He's annoying.

Seriously this series is too long. It should have just been four hours, if that. I'd have cut a lot of the speechifying out of it. Cut it to three or four episodes. Done.

It does however remind me of why I'm annoyed by the War in the Middle East, which has been going on (off and on give or take a century here or there) for about 2000 years. Human being default setting? Selfish Asshole. Or rather, Selfish Entitled Asshole.

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