Reviews

As someone who's world has largely been Aliens vs Predator since age 5, so for 29 years now, this was by far the best Predator movie made to date. It got everything right. The pacing, characterization, tone, it even got back to the original point of the friggin' franchise which was "all the guns and muscles in the world can't save you. Fight smart or die miserably." A couple parts of Feral's design were offputting in a bad way, but so long as they don't become the new standard, whatever. Alien vs Predator was no better with its preds, and was completely miserable with its botched storytelling and fumbling of both franchises.

You can absolutely tell that the animals who fight are CGI. But there's no way you wouldn't be able to, and it's good enough to not be immersion breaking aside from one scene with a snake. And there's no ethical or sane way to use real animals for the action scenes involving them. Complaining about that is complaining about limitations of technology that could only be overcome if the film had been animated.

Most of the background characters were flat, but they had all the development that they really needed for the narrative purposes of this movie. Especially with its limited time to tell said story and pack in the more suspenseful or action-driven scenes. Naru and Taabe were great, supportive siblings. One moment of anger from Taabe aside. But it was believable and understandable with his current frustrations. And the pred vs human fight scenes were the most interesting and exciting that the movies have had. There were no boring deaths. I'd definitely recommend it.

A unique art style, colorful and fun, active and engaging combat where movement was much more important than rotation, and some great writing that never took itself *too* seriously with all the smatterings of humor mixed in. Between all this and the fun selection of playable races unlike those seen in any other MMO, I couldn't help but give the game a try in both the beta and about a month after launch, mostly due to financial issues.

I have been trying nearly every MMO I could get my hands on since the days of Ragnarok Online, because the concept is so appealing. But they were all just so bad. Until Wildstar. It is truly the first MMO that I ever actually enjoyed. And it will be missed dearly. As we near the first anniversary of its shut down, it felt this all just needed to be said again.

The special effects team and the actors are to be commended. They did great work with what they had. It would be one thing if this was at least a new continuity. But it wasn't meant to be. And even forgiving the throwing away of 31 years of continuity and slapping around the creatures who practically created the intergalactic hunter trope, the writing was generally flat, "the Looneys" were insulting renditions of mental health that felt like they came from some 8th grader in the early 2000's who watched too much South Park, and as somebody with it, good god. Every time the main protagonist's son or the glorification of his Autism came up I felt myself sinking into my theater seat in shame. It was just all around a terrible portrayal and the "next step in human evolution" nonsense was just... So stupid. This has outright never happened to me watching any movie before. So I can't help but feel some extra, admittedly bias spite.

I get why a lot of older fans don't like it. Splinter really put me off at first, too, though the whole time I simultaneously found him a hilarious parody of real fathers. And the brothers aren't particularly skilled as ninjas yet, which is used to great comedic effect. But they're still very skilled goofs and a part of the series is that they're actually learning and getting better. We're seeing them *rise* from the lowest we've seen them in any continuity.

The show's a fun ride with lots of character development over time. And the family aspect feels more real than it ever has before. Which is pretty impressive considering the 2012 series. It's refreshing to see characters who are supposed to be teenagers actually act like teenagers. Most multimedia fails miserably at that. If you don't go into it demanding it have the same feel as previous continuities, you should enjoy yourself a lot. Especially if you enjoy themes like supernatural subcultures in modern eras.