entry #10

                             

the five nights at freddy's movie was short of amazing. spoilers ahead, so this is me heeding a final warning before i talk about the good the bad and the ugly! 

unfortunately, i'm biased. i grew up with fnaf. i was there when the first game released and i was there buying every game that released afterwards on my ipad when i was nine. this movie is kind of the epitome of everything i've been dreaming of as a kid. the fact that it even happened and it was possible is enough to sway me into loving the movie. but... despite all that... i'm not all that happy with the way the story was presented.

family tree crisis 

if you know a thing or two about fnaf lore, you'd know the family tree by now. i'll draw a little picture to demonstrate. 

listen, i wholeheartedly understand why they didn't make mike an alias and him being related to william. the afton family has such a deep complicated history and it all predates the fnaf 1 game which means that if you were to start from the beginning or even at the point where william develops the desire to kill kids, you'd have to invest a lot of run time and money into a movie that would probably flop cause you wouldn't have even gotten to the fnaf 1 location in time. 

now, in the fnaf lore since evan is william's son, him dying had a severe psychological impact on william's psyche. what was even worse was the realization that souls were real and could possess the animatronics he made. this event is what drove william to attempting murder via circus baby from the sister location games. we all know that in trying to kill a child using her he accidentally killed his own daughter. but i'll talk about why evan dying and possessing fredbear was more important than elizabeth's death later. 

this event also severely damages michael's psyche as well. he's forever haunted by the fact that he basically murdered his own brother or was careless enough to cause the accident. he is guilt ridden.

changes to the story

 what the fnaf movie does is essentially what ghostbusters 2016 did. reboot of the original story with different characters and a different story. same general concept, done differently. done rather poorly. i feel like these changes were necessary for the fnaf game to be adapted into a film but i really wish they were done differently. 

william afton basically has no motive. he is just a psychopath that loves killing kids. vanessa was really morally grey cause she went through great lengths to protect her dad knowing what he does. but at least she HAD a motive. she could potentially be in danger because her dad could've been... i dunno... threatening her. but she william didn't have the same desire to kill like the william in the games lore did. game william wanted to bring his son back and was also curious about the fact that soul possession and living beyond death was a thing. he was obsessed with it and it drove him insane enough to kill a bunch of kids. but this william? why did he kill kids? was he just... feeling extra murderous? it just doesn't make sense to me and it feels really weak. william was forgettable. this especially applies to why william killed mike's brother garret. it just makes no sense that he was just there at the camping trip. it makes mike's motivations seem stupid because the whole story behind it is stupid. 

vanessa just existing kind of pissed me off. cause she wasn't the best character and i kind of hated her for not stopping her father sooner or not warning them properly. i get why, but i just thought her entire existence was so unnecessary. ESPECIALLY relating her to william. it just felt like they were trying to build some sort of romance between her and mike that just wasn't necessary. it's not shown to be like that but it's implied because of course it is. 

the whole plot with them trying to take away abby was also a little dumb. i guess it gives mike reason to work there but also, it's just kind of a weak way to establish a connection between him and the pizzaria when mike or michael in the lore already had such a strong connection to it.

 what i would do 

i'd make a few major changes but generally keep the way the movie is formatted quite similar. mike and william  are not related, but, michael and his brother evan frequently visited fredbears family diner. michael was hell bent on scaring evan since he had a fear of the animatronics themselves. it was more of a fun experience for michael, being there. so in an act of bullying michael forcecs evan to put his head between the animatronics teeth and the springlock suit's mouth clamps shut on his head just like the original story. during that moment, william is using the spring bonnie suit and witnesses the event just like michael did... except he stays around to investigate the fredbear animatronic afterwards. more on that in a bit. michael is traumatized by this, and so is his mother. shortly after elizabeth is born, she commits suicide and michael by then is old enough to have legal custody of elizabeth. william afton around this time realizes that the fredbear animatronic is being haunted by the dead child. this drives him crazy and his curiosity leads him to commit murders that lead to the death of five children convinced that if he experiments enough, he can keep his soul alive via animatronics after his death (idea taken from the novels). michael, still haunted by the pizzaria and the death of his brother ends up struggling to take care of his sister elizabeth. after beating up a random civilian and losing his job, his boss william (child murderer on the downlow) offers him a job at the pizzaria. obviously michael is extremely reluctant but he can't land other jobs and for the sake of his sister, he accepts. this damages his mental state more and most of the scares in the movie at this point are simply from michael's deteriorating mental health. the pills would be more or less for insomnia and for combating delusional episodes. at this point, i feel like the animatronics don't really have a reason to harm michael. so to give them reason, i want william to have instructed michael to wear the spring bonnie suit's head if the animatronics start trying to get into his office at night because it makes them fearful of michael. this in turn makes them think that michael is william as the kids have only ever seen their murderer being in that suit. though i'd like to have golden freddy popping up with the it's me because it would make sense as his brother is possessing the suit. he'd recognize him. whether his intentions or malicious or not, i dunno. michael is probably driven nuts by this and he realizes that his brother is haunting the suit. he brings elizabeth along to come meet the brother she never got to. somehow he can figure out that the place has been under investigation for the murders of kids ever since evan died, and by then it's too late cause he brought elizabeth to this place. he loses track of her and desperately tries to find her. the animatronics can still want to be her friends. she'd find them and they'd be nice. we can still have a sweet moment in the movie! while she's making friends with them, william kidnaps michael using the spring bonnie suit and brings him to the room with the weird freddy mask saw thing. he's going on and on about how michael started all this and the blood is actually on his hands and that he's going to give michael first hand experience on what his brother went through and how this is all for the greater good yada yada and while he's doing this elizabeth meets evan and evans like our brother is gonna die. and so she brings the animatronics with her to william and that's when the springlock failure happens. and then him going 'i'll always come back' would make sense because he knows that he's going to live to posses the suit. i want the end of the movie, if they're hinting at a sequel to do what the fnaf vhs tapes did and have william talking to himself for three decades until he's found.

better? worse? you decide! but i think i did i pretty ok job piecing a new story together based on the lore. obviously i'm not a film writer and this is pretty shit but i'm pretty confident that it's at least better than the story we got. changing a lot of the way it actually goes but keeping character motives and what scares you at the core of fnaf intact. i also didn't include vanessa because, again, she's totally unnecessary. 

anyways, i still loved that we had the movie but i wish the writing team did better with what they were given. especially cause they didn't develop the main villain that great and ended up rushing the ending! :P

 -eb

entry #9 across the spider-verse + more (be wary of spoilers)

 i don't know how i forgot to mention the fact that i watched spider-man: across the spider-verse. cause, i did! and it was VERY GOOD. almost better and just as brilliant as the first spider-man into the spider-verse movie. i am baffled by the fact that they spent three years figuring out how to animate one character and he ended up being such a big fan favorite. totally worth it, in my opinion! anyways, onto the spoilers... 

stunned by the beauty of the animation, and absolutely floored by the story! it manages to build up something incredibly interesting from the previous film. everything makes sense, everything fits into place, and they managed to make a joke villain like the spot into something much more sinister. he's both lovable, and fearsome. i love how despite the clumsiness and the goofiness to him the rush of power gets to his head and you can see it in his personality. i'm also very fond of how they handled gwen and her relationship with her dad and the others in this. you get to learn a lot more about how gwen thinks and what goes on in her life beyond miles and that's amazing. i also really like how she manages to heal her relationship with her dad. just incredible and so very touching. her world has such a unique touch to it as well. miles will always be my favorite character and spiderverse does him so incredibly well that he's almost the perfect protagonist. when all other spider-men failed to have the determination that makes spider-man who he is, miles persists. i hope that ends up inspiring all the other spider-men in the end too. and prowler miles? all that foreshadowing from the first movie? SIIIIIIICK. soo sick. also a big fan of donald glover's appearance as a real life prowler. the only thing that really fucks me over about this film is the "to be continued" ending. such a marvelous experience that i'm gonna have to wait a whole year to re-experience. it's a pain in the ass but i have VERY high hopes that it will be worth the wait. oh MAN! i forgot all about how they fixed peter and mary jane's relationship and it makes me so happy. i am so sick and tired of the spider-man comics fucking it up and making peter a miserable piece of shit when they could've easily done this. they nailed mary jane's character down to a t perfect and just how it should be. she understands peter and she's good for him like she SHOULD be. always cheers me up to see good peter/mj rep. i could talk about so many of the other characters in the movie. they're all fantastic. miguel is also equally as funny as he is horrifying and badass. he has personality, he has motivation, and he looks fucking sick. 

this movie inspired dave and i to create our own spider-men. i kind of want to redraw them so i'll post them here afterwards. mine is way cooler just saying.

moving on from that, i think i mentioned reading superman: up in the sky yesterday. i commented on how hard to read it was and that i was beginning to feel disinterested in the comic. i'm very glad i didn't just stop reading because the ending was incredibly moving. when superman finally found alice, the conversation that ensues and the persistence to find her made me emotional. it made me remember exactly why i love superman. cause superman is pure good. he tries to be hope and that's so admirable. one child gets hurt because he wants to impersonate him and he thinks he has to quit in order to save that one child. then he realizes, the only way he's going to save these children is to be superman. and i also love batman's dialogue at the end where they ask how clark did it and he goes "cause he's superman". i actually grinned ear to ear when reading it. i'm so happy i picked up this comic. i'll continue to read more superman comics. 

last night i also watched the first guardians of the galaxy movie with my friend cooper, but i won't say much about it until we get to the third movie. i'm planning on watching all three in a row so i keep up with the story. all i gotta say for now is... I LOVE GOTG! and i'm so happy the reviews of the third movie are so positive! we have gotten two great movies this summer and i hope we keep getting good movies like this. 

 more about my life, i recently attended a convention. i think i forgot to mention that? i had a very good time! i bought jewelry for the first time. a triforce necklace and a necklace of an atom. they both look cool. i like wearing bracelets and necklaces sometimes but only the thick kinds. i also like watches but i haven't owned a watch in a while. it'd be a cool birthday gift, but i'm in favor of getting a gaming computer first. i actually bought a few stickers to put on the computer i eventually get around to buying. fingers crossed! i also got this depressing spider-man card holder cause i was in need of some kind of wallet. i'd much rather own an actual leather wallet but this'll do for now so i don't have to take out my deadpool purse every time i want to purchase something. it's not a purse but it sure looks like one. i have also been getting prepared to go to my schools ball! it's like american prom but we call it ball over here for some god forsaken reason. i haven't gone out suit shopping yet but i hope i can get around to doing that eventually. 

that's all from me for today.

-eb

(b.t.w, to the person copying my blog format for some reason... stop doing that you nerd.)

entry #8 hereditary and midsommar (spoilers ahead. be wary!)

 

yesterday i got super bored cause my best friend dave took a nap. to avoid having to write a biology report, i decided to watch both of the acclaimed ari aster horror films, hereditary and misommar. i watched midsommar first cause i had heard a lot more about it. first it was all those tik tok edits and i was just confused as to why they were all wearing flower crowns and such. what i gathered from what i saw was that this girl was heavily drugged and in some kind of weird cult. kind of like nine perfect strangers. that's a miniseries i saw with melissa mcarthy in it. i didn't go out of my way to watch it, my aunt and uncle had it on and at dinner time so it piqued my curiosity. it wasn't all that good in my opinion. i still felt that there was a lot of similarity between them. anyways, midsommar was a LOT more exciting. not in the good way! the gore was horrendous! that scene where they bludgeoned that old dude's head is gonna scar me for good! i have had my fair share of seeing terrible gore in shows like hannibal, which is what the barn scene reminded me of with the spread out lungs. kind of like angel wings. reminds me of the only hannibal murder that stuck with me, the one where he sat these two people at the foot of a bed in a prayer pose while he hung the skin off their backs on hooks. messed up. anyways, as chilling as the movie was... with the will poulter flesh suit and what-not, i felt a bit lost. especially with dani and chris. it wasn't the fault of the plot more or less the actual characters and their relationships with each other. it just felt oddly blank. like, there wasn't much to it. i guess dani was meant to kind of lose her sanity. i don't know. by the way, i really thought that was chris pratt. it made me question if i was actually seeing will poulter and william jackson harper too or if they were also lookalikes. i really liked the foreshadowing in the film though. especially with the bear and all the artistry. in both films, ari aster always places down clues as to what the ending is going to be like and i really like it. it's the little things that count! i loved seeing this in heredity. after i saw the movie i was inclined to rewatch it with the knowledge i had gained beforehand. it was kind of like a shutter island situation where you are absolutely dumbfounded at the end so you need to go back and see how obvious it was just to make yourself feel stupider. heredity is a brilliant movie with brilliant acting. the horror in the film only gets better as the movie progresses. i really like how real peter felt as a teenager. the scene where he just goes upstairs and lies down in bed until they find charlies dead body is such a realistic portrayal of trying to act like something didn't happen out of shock. too late to do anything so all you can do is wait till someone else finds out. i think it was really sad how annie made peter feel like he had to carry all that guilt of being partially responsible for charlie's death. their relationship felt so flimsy and distance, like they both didn't want to be around one another which is a crazy thing to see in a mother and child relationship in movies without seeing them have any big fights or anything. annie always felt distant to peter. so much so that it took me until the scene where she admitted he was a failed miscarriage to figure out that peter was her biological son. this brings me to my favorite and the most chilling scene in the movie. the scene where peter is being chased by annie and he escapes up to the attic, pleading for her to stop and the banging is so fast it kind of sounds like annie is knocking with her fists. no, dude. she's upside down spider-manning it on the ceiling and BASHING her head into the attic door so fast it sounds like knocking. nothing in a horror movie has chilled me more than seeing that. the switch to complete demonic possession from trying to get rid of the demonic presence in annie was so unexpected. i wasn't a big fan of it but it certainly creeps you out a lot more. also, there's just something about naked smiling people that freak me out. oh man, and charlie's head on that creepy mannequin with the praying cult members. it was freakishly artistic, in a way? i think the ending was meant to mock the miniature houses annie would make. i really liked the lore behind both movies, but there were so many hints as to what would happen in heredity. once you know, it all makes sense. the photographs, the way joanne (?) was acting... super phenomenal. i'm actually really fond of the demon reveal at the end. i know it's pretty generic but it was done in a really cool way. it wasn't just like... ohh yeahh... their family was tied back to a cult this whole time!! you never knew! and all these weird things can just be explained away... because we're lazy writers. no, it was hinted at at the start and it's an interesting concept. this isn't like a countdown situation. the reveal that it was a demon king all along was creepy and badass. i found myself going back and piecing the story together properly afterwards. like, ohhhh charlie was possessed by paimon from the start. ohhh that's why there's weird herbs in the tea and charlie's drink. that's why ellen was so weird ooohh. the movie manages to explain away everything it set up from the start and that's always nice to see. i'm a big fan of my questions being answered. anyways, watch hereditary (definitely) and if you wanna creep yourself out even more watch midsommar. phenomenal acting from toni collette, by the way. she captured the grieving mother role so well. a fantastic performance countered with really good writing. i was not having a fun time after watching the movie because nightfall is at 5pm in the winters of new zealand, and i had to go outside for a brief period of time. thankfully dave was awake and i was able to pester him into staying in call with me as i ran out of the house in the freezing cold and the dead of night to deliver a heater to my aunt's house. 

update on my drawing situation: cooper's pen arrived alongside an ultimate spider-man comic which just so happened to be the comic i left off at! how convenient? it's the first time i've witnessed one of my fictional heroes utter a slur besides captain kirk from star trek. i think it meant a different thing at the time back then but peter parker was not afraid to hit flash thompson with some unlike-peter-parker language. i'm not complaining. i love a swearing spider-man. just didn't expect the one time i saw him swear to be him calling a kid retarded. that's crazy! 

i have been reading immortal hulk and i will continue to do so. it's very well written and interesting. i tried to read superman: up in the sky (i think?) but i'm just not following all that well. probably cause i don't touch superman comics a lot. anyways, bye.

-eb

 

 

 

 

entry #7 movie review of the knowing

 i haven't posted here in quite some time. i want to try and keep it a frequent thing because i am strictly against having a tumblr. i'm just too busy to vomit all my important thoughts out into the blogspot i keep forgetting i have! well, anyhow, i've been busy doing a lot of school work. but, that's boring to talk about. so i'm gonna review the movie Knowing (2009)! you might've seen it. it's a science fiction thriller with psychic children, aliens that look like jared leto when he bleached his hair, and nicholas cage. 

to be completely honest... this movie was surprisingly entertaining! i really like how cage totally nailed his character, john (hey!). we start off pretty well. the entirety of the pre-2009 jump was preformed really well. it set up the movie excellently and i was totally creeped out by this little girl's numeric code. but then the rest of the movie happened. there are a lot of things that are just left unexplained in this movie. i think it's because the jared leto aliens refused to talk, but, i think it's just kind of difficult to try and make sense of the story? so, aliens 50 years ago suddenly decided to contact this poor child into writing down a bunch of numbers to warn the world of a deadly solar flare. by the way, if you have any basic space science education you'll know that this is virtually impossible. the worst a solar flare could do is cost spacex a few billion dollars and set a forest fire off. which, is kind of bad but it's just not as cool of a post-apocalyptic movie as armageddon, deep impact, or interstellar are. the threat of asteroids, comets, and life-form killing fungi/disease is a lot more realistic and cooler than a dumb solar flare. i digress, then on top of that the superior lifeforms that warned humans about this end of times by forcing a child to spiral into a lifelong insanity about it show up looking like they came out of fashion week only to drop a few go stones and kidnap two random children. like, seriously? you really can't just.... i dunno.... stop the solar flare from happening? what's the point of killing off the rest of humanity if you were trying to save it by saving a handful of children? who even are these guys? also, where the HELL did they take them? it's just such a weird way to end the movie. i was really only satisfied that john got to make up to his parents and that he got over his dead wife! 

but, i'm a sucker for visual effects. 2009 seemed to be the year we finally started understanding how computer sfx worked. i mean, look at james cameron's avatar. that scene where the plane crashed into the road was flawlessly executed. i was really stunned by cage's performance during this scene too. you could really see that he was determined to keep all that panic and fear inside, especially in front of his kid. 

anyways, my friend cooper is posting me one of his spare pens so i can make digital art again. i'll share what i'm working on here because i've noticed that i don't share any of my personal projects on my blog and that's absurd. thanks for reading, if you are! 

-eb

entry #6!

 so, i've been up to nothing. mostly just doing bullshit while school goes by. there's only a few more weeks left till break and i'm super ready for that. i've been on the study grind for too long! it's making me lose a few screws. 

it was nowruz the other day. so, happy new year to my persian brothers and sisters. i got 150 dollars and a monster energy drink out of it. i don't drink monster, but i appreciate the effort. 

that's all i really have. i factory reset my laptop so that it could run better. it was obviously the right thing to do because now everything feels four times faster than it was. i was running minecraft on 10fps and it boosted up to 90fps with 85 mods. obviously it's nothing too crazy. i have a shitty gt 710 and this laptop is only six years younger than i am. it's a big improvement though! i'm going to catch up with all the bio work i missed out on. so, bye! have a lovely day.

-eb

entry #5 (valentines day!)

it was valentines day yesterday. needless to say, i did not do a lot. my relationship is long distance, so i was planning on doing some kind of movie date. that didn't work out for the first two days. today i managed though. we watched the movie palm springs. you know, the one with my all time favorite, andy samberg, in it! i love that guy. i was watching snl skits and i came across this batman one with him and steve buscemi. it's pretty funny. that reminded me of palm springs cause i heard my friend cal talking about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDoagUcrns8&ab_channel=SaturdayNightLive

it was pretty good. i really liked their dynamic and i'm super fond of cristin milioti's acting. i remember her from that star trek inspired black mirror episode. i guess that's why she was picked up for this role. her character in palm spring's had the same will and motive that her character in black mirror did. like, it's almost the same thing. i liked it anyways. 

i also re-watched scott pilgrim vs the world. i have the first issue so i was reading along as i was watching. i like the dialogue in the comics and the art but the movie was just fantastic. i'm super tired so i'll leave it there. hope i get more commissioners soon.

-eb