Comic and Movie Bitrot for 27 March 2024 - Why Am Standing? + Something Obvious About The Divergent Films
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Welcome back to another edition of Comic And Movie Bitrot. As a reminder, you can find much of this on Blogger. You can follow Zachary on Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and, most importantly, his website. We’re through another week in the world, and there was only a terrorist attack in Russia, a bridge collapsed in Baltimore, and Donald Trump got his bond size reduced (as well as a stay on the restrictions about corporations and that group of mob-wannabes.) Probably the biggest news this week was SCOTUS remembering some stuff from a lawsuit about someone needing to be harmed to be able to bring a case to them. So, Mifepristone lives for another day. And, as of now, Caitlin Clark is still in March Madness! Let’s just shift to comic books. We’ve only got four titles this week, but hopefully, there will be more reviews next week. For now, titles are scored on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the worst.
Infernals - Issue 2
Image Comics
Review by Zachary Hunchar
So, if you prefer heroes in your story, this is not the tale for you. The anti-Christ is dying, and he never completed his purpose. Now, his three children are setting out trying to prove they deserve to assume the role with poor results. None of them seem very competent, and their father knows this. So he gives them the task of preventing a good-guy tech bro from doing something altruistic. I guess. I’m not sure. There is some other stuff about the mother of these kids returning and some inheritance drama. It’s all very bland, as it feels like there is no new ground being explored. I think the concept seems shocking enough that the creative team feels this will mask the lack of obstacles. The artwork is interesting, even if the faces are a bit weird.
Score: 5 out of 10
The Displaced - Issue 2
BOOM! Studios
Review by Zachary Hunchar
This is a more nuanced horror story about people who escape a supernatural disaster, and the rest of the world slowly forgets any survivors. So, how do you prove to the world there is a threat when they don’t even believe you exist? And if you are alone for too long, even you forget, and then you disappear. This issue wasn’t quite as enjoyable as the first issue, as it moved into explanation instead of set-up. I think the comic’s big pitch was the problem, but not as much about what it means. What does this mean? Can it be solved? That is not clear, but I suppose if you keep showing up, you might find out. The artwork is OK, but there are points where it is nearly impossible to tell which character is which.
Score: 7.5 out of 10
The Bloody Dozen - Issue 4 (of 6)
Image Comics
Review by Zachary Hunchar
This issue shifts gears for a large chunk, and I get it from a pacing standpoint. The vampires were rescued from their sun prison, and now a rival group wants to destroy them. There wasn’t a lot that could happen between those two points, so something else needed to go in that space. The creators decided we needed to learn more about the vampires. This is an interesting idea as it makes them almost human. It’s a lovely metaphor for humans consuming animal flesh. But mostly, it reinforces the loneliness they feel and how they avoid it as a group. They seem more real than the humans. The art and cover are pretty good.
Score: 8 out of 10
Dungeons & Dragons: Fortune Finder - Issue 5
IDW Publishing
Review by Zachary Hunchar
This final issue of this mini-series (I think it is a miniseries) concluded, and I guess the D&D Tour Guide to the Planes wrapped up. The most important part of the story is that the title is wrong. It’s not Finder but F1ND3R. Then, we got how all of this started, but we didn’t really get why it started. It was kind of depressing in a way, but it ended in a manner that was hopeful. Overall, though, this series was just OK. It had a nice look to is with interesting layouts.
Score: 6.5 out of 10
For some reason, sites have been talking about the Divergent series of movies. I guess we’re around the 10th anniversary of the first film. I look back warmly to this time when Twilight and Hunger Games were paying my rent. But not so much with Divergent, which had all the headache and none of the upside. This article from Yahoo Finance has this to say:
Despite the final movie never getting made, author Veronica Roth feels the film franchise is still complete. During an exclusive interview with PEOPLE in October 2023, Roth opened up about the Divergent controversy, including the controversial decision to split the final book into two movies.
"I mean, breaking things in two was all the rage at the time. That was why that decision was made," Roth explained. "But at that point, I think I always felt peace about it just because I knew the movies were taking a different track than the books, and if you change the lead up, you change the ending. So I kind of felt like at that point ... I feel like that third movie ... it's its own thing."
"It feels complete to me, relatively speaking, because what does that even mean at that point?" she added.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/why-final-divergent-film-never-131500875.html
Most recent articles about this don’t spend much time touching upon all of the issues that this series had. The most obvious was the blandness of the world and the unappealing character the lead actress was given.
https://www.vox.com/2016/3/21/11277480/divergent-female-action-heroes
For me, the biggest issue was that the studio wasn’t committed to the series. Or, at least, it didn’t seem like they were. Usually, for a big-budget FX movie, it gets greenlit years before its release. Lionsgate wanted to see how the first film did before starting the next one. BUT… they wanted to keep the same weekend in the next year, so that meant less than a year to make the film.
I can only wake up with night terrors about trying to deploy the film in twenty-three foreign markets at the same time as the US when they were still finishing the film two weeks before its release. And it is unlikely most of you know how digital film distribution works, but this was at the tail-end of 35mm. It was brutal. So, as the quality went down and the performance matched, enthusiasm decreased. By audiences and studio execs.
I suspect a TV series that throws most of the original story out the window might work better. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though.