Comments by "disgruntledtoons" (@disgruntledtoons) on "The Critical Drinker" channel.

  1. Episode X of Star Wars should start with Luke doing the exact same thing.
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  2. When Pixar was good, they had a sign in one of the hallways that read, "Story is King." Pixar seems to have forgotten that, and many studios never learned it.
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  3. The "logic" goes like this: Abuse is bad. But we approve of Wendy, so what she did wasn't bad. Therefore it wasn't abuse.
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  4. Reynolds is going to need all of that money he gets from hawking Mint Mobile...
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  5. One of the Disney theme parks is powered by a generator that is hooked to Walt Disney's tomb.
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  6. Most of the time, when you dislike a movie it's because there is something wrong with the movie. In the case of this movie, if you dislike the movie it's because there is something wrong with you.
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  7. Okay, peeps, here's the plan: 1) A handful of people who care about good stories more than they do about money or politics writes a compelling tale. 2) A handful of talented artists and animators bring the story to life. They scale back the artistic level to match their skills so that from a visual perspective everything has the same level of realism. 3) They release it on a monetized YouTube channel. There's no need for major studios or big-name stars anymore.
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  8. Studio execs want everyone beneath them to be replaceable at the drop of a hat. That means you hire mediocrities, and use gimmicks to cover up their shoddy product.
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  9. The prequel aspect also clarifies why the Star Wars prequels never really had a chance. We all knew that Anakin was going to fall. We knew Luke and Leia were going to be born. We knew that Palpatine was going to take over. There was no overall drama.
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  10. What is perhaps the saddest thing about your videos is that many professional critics know everything that you know about the art of filmmaking, but give reviews that betray every scrap of that knowledge, and call films according to the external politics at stake.
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  11. The original Pike was pushed out because the actor who played him (Jeffrey Hunter) declined to be in the second pilot.
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  12. The problem with the strong female leads is not that they exhibited behaviors that were only accepted among men; they exhibited a level of assholery that is not tolerated even among men.
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  13. The best Star Trek show is The Orville, and the best Star Trek movie is Galaxy Quest.
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  14. The picture where Kathleen Kennedy wears the t-shirt reading, "The Force is Female" should have resulted in her immediate termination.
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  15. Lara Croft was a hit game, so it's a given that you can have a strong female lead in a movie that men will pay to watch.
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  16. A better example of Batman being Batman is in the Batman-Superman special on the WB. Superman, having met up with Batman that day, and having used his X-ray vision to discern that Batman is Bruce Wayne, is turning in for the night. He doffs his costume, and finds a minute tracking device on it. He goes to the window and looks out, using his super-vision to look a couple miles off. Batman is looking directly back at him, gives him a thumb's up, and then vanishes into the night.
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  17. The artistic compass of every studio executive is pointed directly at the last place he saw money. That is why we have garbage sequels.
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  18. It's true that some of the people tearing down heroes don't know what they're doing, but there are some who know exactly what they're doing. They're nihilists. When nothing matters, there will still be power, the brief reign of being at the top of the pecking order, and nobody fighting against it.
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  19. Mark Hamill hates what was done to the character he played, but he loves the politics that drove that transformation.
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  20. Just watch with the sound off, skip the parts that don't have pleasing bodies, and enjoy the film.
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  21. This review has got me itching to start work on a story idea I've had for a couple of decades.
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  22. If you want to see the multiverse concept handled properly, you have to read the Eternal Champion novels by Michael Moorcock. The separate universes are not (for the most part) slight variations. Most of them are completely different from each other; earth has different continents that are populated by different races of intelligent life, the laws of nature (and magic) are different, and the gods have varying levels of power in each. In others the major differences are of the "What if the South had won the civil war" level of different. Only in the Jerry Cornelius novels are the worlds more or less the same, and those novels are one part social commentary and one part nihilism.
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  23. I was in a theater watching one of the Batman movies when a trailer comes on for a western. The audience was silent until the first shot with Clint Eastwood; then the audience went nuts. The movie was Unforgiven.
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  24. Social Justice in video games will have the added benefit of encouraging straight white men to take up a more productive use for their time, like transporting all sensible people to another planet and letting Earth go to pot.
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  25. There is still hope. Thanks to the Internet, you can write a compelling story, your friend who can draw and a good visual designer can collaborate with you to storyboard it, a good voice coach and some voice actors can perform the dialogue, and then the CGI artists can model and animate the story. None of this requires any two people to be in the same room at the same time. The only part that takes a long time is the CGI work. You release the preview reel on all of the video sites (YouTube, Rumble, Vimeo, etc.), and then release the rest as 5-minute episodes over the next couple years.
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  26. Political preachiness wasn't even new in 2009. Ferngully was propaganda that looked like propaganda, and that was in the 90's. And I'm sure that lefty propaganda dressed up as storytelling goes back even farther.
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  27. More plot holes in a single half hour than in the entire original trilogy!
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  28. Stories do end. Sequences of related events can go on indefinitely.
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  29. I would like to point out that at times a US Air Force fighter pilot will ask to speak to his commander about an upcoming mission. They will go somewhere behind closed doors, and after a period of time they will come out in perfect agreement about the mission. Behind the closed doors, the discussion would probably be considered a breach of military discipline. But that never leaves the room.
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  30. As with factories, so it is with entertainment franchises: People who could never have built something on their own grow envious of the prestige enjoyed by those who can, noisily proclaim that they can run that thing even better than the person who created it, do what they can to seize the creations, and then go on to prove that their claim is a conceit with no factual basis.
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  31. You can see why the people behind this show have the politics to which they cling. Like a commissar seizing a factory for which he never could have been more than a line worker, let along have had any role in establishing it, the twerps behind this show took control of a legendarium which they never could have created.
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  32. Star Trek: Picard is to storytelling what Marxism is to economics. People whose only talents are people skills seize control of something they never could have built and pursue their own agenda with it, and because they have no idea how the system really works they wreck it.
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  33. I'm persuaded that none of the people in charge of the SW franchise really know why it was great.
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  34. No patriarchies were smashed in the making of this film.
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  35. The real tragedy is that it was better than the shows that sucked up all the oxygen then.
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  36. I suppose they had a backlog of diverse women and wanted to get their contracts filled as quickly as possible.
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  37. It really should be a law that when the creator of an IP passes from this life, the IP enters into the public domain. That way the IP does not hang on just one studio which can destroy on a political whim.
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  38. "I will die making movies." That's a slight shift from now, where she makes movies that die.
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  39. Allowing Snoke to manipulate Luke deprives Luke of his agency. A story where the heroes don't have agency is not a story.
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  40. The biggest mystery is why the most beloved franchises in fantasy and science fiction have been handed over to people who clearly do not understand what made them good. Star Wars, Star Trek, and now Lord of the Rings.
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  41. Episode X should start with a montage of scenes from the sequel trilogy, culminating with Luke waking up in his bed, shaking his head in disbelief, and leaving the room, which turns out to be his quarters at his Jedi Academy. Kylo (back to his birth name of Ben Solo) is there and has not fallen to the dark side. Rey is there, and she is either Ben's sister or Luke's daughter. The sequel trilogy is just a crazy dream that Luke had one night. Han Solo shows up and they talk about Leia's assassination, which sets the plot in motion. We watch as the gains from the original trilogy are squandered by galactic politicians, with a shadowy manipulator the background. Solo gets assassinated in the film near its conclusion. Luke dies in episode XI, after unmasking Snoke as the manipulator. Then in episode XII, Snoke gets beaten, somehow. It can't be worse. And throughout all three films, people who look like Rian Johnson or JJ Abrams are kicked in the nads for no apparent reason. Repeatedly.
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  42. There's also the fact that the original story in the battle of Helm's Deep was written by one of the gods of English literature, whereas the Amazon show was written by lobotomized apes.
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  43. The other reason that studio execs want to rehash old, successful ideas is because they want writers whom they can treat as disposable objects. Writers who create stories that are both fresh and good tilt the balance of power in their favor.
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  44. It's easy to explain how California teamed up with Texas: After the EBT system was brought down, the blue areas were destroyed in rioting, causing California to flip.
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  45. The people who walk their dogs over canon are to art what socialists are to factories. They can't create, they cannot build, but they can seize.
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  46. @1:07 the crowd that gets its therapy from Dr. Katzenwein.
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  47. The new Hollywood writers are confusing strength with power.
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  48. The greatest sin of this movie is something you mentioned: The premise of a criminal adopting a new identity and trying to make up for his past is a good concept that could have made a good film. But the good premise was squandered by inept handling and political messaging.
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  49. After R. Lee Ermey so perfectly filled that role, it should be illegal to cast anyone as a drill sergeant unless he/she was a drill sergeant in real life.
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  50. Meanwhile, Pixar has (or, at least, had) animators who could put realism into the physics. When Mr. Incredible lifts the huge block of stone he has to carefully balance the load to keep himself steady. The block looks like it weighs tons. As Brad Bird stated, this is not something CGI does out of the box.
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  51. Don't worry about spoiling any movie. You can't spoil a good movie, because a good movie doesn't depend on the surprises in it to be enjoyable.
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  52. The other difference is that Tolkien firmly believed that man has a spiritual component to his character, and that this is why things like courage and especially honor are important. Modern Hollywood, because of the choices that Hollywood's leaders have made for their lives, firmly believes that man is just a clever animal. There is no honor among animals, just the false notion of honor that makes people claw their way up the social order.
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  53. Star Trek: The Acolyte
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  54. The real crisis that a thirty-six-year-old Kirk should be facing is the growing question, "Is this it?" With every step up the ladder of success, he finds that the success isn't as fulfilling as he hoped it would be. This mostly strikes people who are at the pinnacle from which there is no further potential to rise.
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  55. When you were talking about how bland Pixar has become, you were showing clips from the John Lasseter era, when their stories were still good.
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  56. Is it even good MST3K fodder?
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  57. The thing is, we have a photo from before The Force Awakens, which shows KK and a bunch of other non-males wearing t-shirts that say, "The Force is Female." It foretold that good storytelling was going to take a back seat to promoting an agenda. It wasn't fan pressure that made Rey a Mary Sue; that was entirely on Disney. It wasn't fan pressure that made Rian Johnson treat the franchise the way Beavis and Butthead would have treated a class assignment; that was entirely on him.
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  58. Inexplicable stupidity is the very worst plot device of all.
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  59. The moment a story makes use of mind control, the story is over. What happens after that is simply a series of meaningless events.
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  60. If you want to know one thing about Adolph Hitler, know that he rejoiced at the outbreak of WWI.
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  61. If it leads to more women with nice figures dressing like @0:42, I can put up with just about anything. But good writing, acting, and directing do help.
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  62. It's all very simple. The Left's stock in trade is to seize control of things. It is the linch-pin of their approach to everything. It explains why economies, schools, and creative studios all become hollow shells of their former selves. Each has suffered seizure by the Left, who lacks any of the skills required to make them successful, and everything goes pear-shaped.
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  63. Back when their films were still good, there was a sign that hung in Pixar studios which read, "Story is King."
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  64. Everything not made by the original creator is fan fiction. It might be good fan fiction once in a while (some TNG, some DS9, Rogue One), but the chances of shoddy product are high.
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  65. The pastel coloring suggests that Army of the DEI would be a better title.
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  66. We need a program where the brains of intelligent people with terminal conditions can be transplanted into the bodies of good-looking woke activists. That way a perfectly good body doesn't go to waste supporting a malfunctioning brain.
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  67. Military veteran here. Nobody, and I mean nobody who engaged in fisticuffs on duty would be allowed into any part of the ship except the brig, let alone the bridge, let alone the captain's chair. TNG was pretty far removed from how a real military goes about doing things, but things got worse as they went along and with the new movies it's a complete mockery.
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  68. The things that happen can only matter if there are things that cannot happen.
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  69. The live-action Mulan is the Chinese Rey.
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  70. The only weak points in the film were where the film deviated from the book. That's how good the underlying story is.
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  71. The image of Kathleen Kennedy standing with the other women, all wearing shirts that say, "The Force is Female" should have resulted in her immediate termination. It was a clear signal that good storytelling was going to take a back seat to woke politics.
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  72. Brent Spiner has fallen farther than Bill Cosby.
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  73. Thanks to 3d printing and this thing we call the Internet, it would take very little time for a group of like-minded hobbyists to generate their own lore (set in a different legendarium) and downloadable models, make it freely licensed, and thereby open the market to a level of competition that GW could not withstand.
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  74. One lesson: If you're studio exec, you organize the production team so that in any given creative conflict, one of the two people butting heads can overrule the other.
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  75. "Mother box" has got to be the stupidest name for any techno-doodad, ever.
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  76. The moral compasses of Hollywood producers are pointed towards the last place they saw money.
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  77. It would really help if Harrison Ford had not been so cynical about his roles in the first place. He had no attachment to the roles he's played, no matter how beloved those characters are to the rest of us. If the check clears he's on board. Some selectivity would have forewarned us that this movie, or Star Wars sequel trilogy, was garbage to be avoided at all costs.
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  78. If someone would reboot the old Batman show, and keep it just as unserious as the original show with Adam West and Burt Ward, I'd start watching television again.
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  79. The NinjaKidz YouTube channel made their own parody of this which ends when the Mother Boxes are combined. Steppenwolf's mother comes out of it and scolds him, grabbing him by the ear and forcing him to go home. Much better, methinks.
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  80. Gaia forbid that the American film audience be encouraged to embrace an objective moral framework.
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  81. If you haven't done a "The Drinker Fixes: She-Hulk": a) She starts out as a successful lawyer but a very self-centered person. In the first episode she is walking out of her apartment and runs into her neighbor, who tells her that she is going to divorce her husband because she's found a new man. Pre-She-Hulk agrees with this course of action. b) After works, she goes out to dinner with her fiancé. Over dinner he breaks up with her. c) In her car ride with Cousin Bruce, she breaks down and asks, "Where are all the good men?" Bruce's response: "You ran past them chasing men who were fun." d) Being unable to handle criticism, she blows up at him, leading to the accident. Instead of blood mixing, she gets her powers because Bruce was carrying with him a lock box with a radioactive whizzo in it; it gets broken open and she gets exposed. e) Her new powers, combined with her self-centered nature, cause everyone in her circle to end their relationships with her. f) A superhero situation comes up. She totally hits her stride fighting the bad guys, feeling on top of the world. The bad guys flee, leaving some innocents in imminent danger. She gives chase, and after catching the villains she learns that the innocents she left in danger were killed. g) She walks home, feeling horrible, and as she crosses a bridge she sees a man about to jump off of it. It's her neighbor's soon-to-be-ex-husband. Let's say his name is Wesley. She persuades him to stop, and they go out for coffee. He bares his soul, utterly devastated, and she sees the immense harm caused by something that she approved of. h) It is then revealed that her ex-fiance is the new man that her neighbor has found. She starts throwing cars and other things that warrant a superhero intervention. Her cousin Bruce is only barely able to keep her from wrecking the city. i) The fight ends when Wesley talks her down. "The best revenge is a good life."
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