Burning Hearts

“We get to rock in chairs.” - Adam Driver, Venice 2023

Jim comes home.

Okay, this was cute!

Just a silly lil stupid idea I wanted to share after Ithica saga because lord knows we need it after that

But just imagine after he gets home, Odysseus & Telemachus are playing on the beach & Telemachus decides to run into the water. Ody chases after him, but when he gets to the water’s edge it quickly recedes around him to the point where it’s obvious it’s avoiding him. & to be funny, Telemachus jokes “I think Poseidon’s afraid of you, father”

& without missing a beat, he goes “he doesn’t have to be. I’m home now” & now Telemachus is like 👀👀👀 cause what the hell is THAT supposed to mean

Odysseus just smirks & cups his hands around his mouth & yells something like “I promise I won’t stab you again!” What? He can show off & brag to his son

& then a huge wave crashes straight into Ody & knocks him flat on his ass

You see, this is why I'm afraid to fall in love, you know why? Cuz what if we're not literally Odysseus and Penelope? What then? What am I supposed to do with my life?

Who's your favorite?

Poppy playtime Catnap just wanna have fun too

I think what I love about Vontra is that you immediately pick up that she's an antagonist.

Spoilery bits below, mostly I'm rambling.

We spent this whole movie with characters being introduced as threats, they attack Roz, break her, steal peices of her, insult her. Roz is subjected to the brutality of the food chain every scene of the movie, but for the animals this is natural, this is normal. You eat others, others eat you, you fight to stay alive every day.

Roz's compassion in encoded into her, it's the human pack bonding that makes everyone in the film think she's weird, and she never loses this most human part of herself. Proof that she was made by human hands, it saves her and everyone else.

Except that it's a part of human kind that humans in power don't like.

The place that made Roz wants everything to be perfect, it's a city of the future, an oasis for select humans to escape what is slowly revealed to be a world in ruins from climate change, but we never see more of that except the passing scenery of destroyed cities.

Life is still growing, still thriving, and corporations are still building walled cities and promising the ultra wealthy a completely subservient servant class.

When the ship arrives to collect Roz, the ship she's been trying to signal half the movie, we don't know what to expect. Are they friendly? Are they here to fix her? She's been slowly breaking down the final half of the movie, leaking fluid, losing peices, shutting down as her battery depletes faster and faster. She gets fatigued, she uses a prosthetic, she goes days without moving.

She is disabled.

And down from this ship that is supposed to rescue her drops a peppy sounding companion who promises to 'fix' her.

Even though she is programmed to sound happy to put others at ease, as she states, you know immediately that she is Bad News.

The way she talks down to Roz, her manner of speech, her constant invasion of personal space, her pointed questions that are obviously accusations.

Yeah we all went "ooh toxic yuri >3" because we love queer coded villains getting flirty.

But it was also very obviously meant to feel violating, specifically similar to medical violation.

Roz was on display as a disabled robot, something in need of repair, in need of help, but Vontra saw her as something needing to be Corrected, not simply fixed but full factory reset, all the bits of her that are unique sent away to be studied.

Roz wanted help, she wanted to belong, she wanted to be repaired, but she also still wanted to be HER. However it's her disability that influenced her changes in coding, she needed to create her own updates to get around issues she faced, and it created a personality she enjoyed being.

She wanted a choice, but Vontra was programmed to see all deviation from the norm as something in need of repair. Roz wasn't a person in need of help, she was a defect to be collected, studied, adjusted, and put back out into production.

Respecting Roz, her boundaries, her thought process, even her willingness to be touched, it didn't even occur to Vontra. Because Vontra is a robot programmed to collect broken robots, and Roz is a broken robot.

Nostalgic memory loss and cherry picking annoy me to the core.

2006 features other CGI-laden flims such as...

Son of the Mask

And Ultraviolet

While 2024 featured...

Dune 2

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

This shot was literally impossible to create in 2006.

Good CGI is made by good artists who have the proper funding, time, and resources. The year doesn't matter.

There has always been bad CGI. There has always been good CGI.

Current CGI is much more advanced and allows for much bigger stories to be told. Most of it is so good, people do not even realize they are looking at CGI. Yes, Top Gun 2 shot a lot of amazing practical footage. But they still had 2400 VFX shots.

And no one could tell the difference.

But also, movies with 2000+ CG shots usually have a quality delta. They run short on time and budget and they have to prioritize which shots get the most love. If there is one valid complaint about modern CGI, it is the lack of consistency.

You might have a weird looking floating head in one scene...

And that is very easy to cherry pick and say "look at how bad CGI is these days!"

But then later in the movie you have the shadow realm moon.

A gorgeous scene that used a groundbreaking lighting effect. Using a strobe technique and a high speed camera, every frame in the scene had six different angles of lighting.

They were able to show a fast revolving sun circling around the characters without having to rig up some crazy light that flies around the room.

Again, not possible in 2006.

When artists have proper resources they will blow your mind.

CGI isn't worse. It is better than ever. It's just that the artists making Davy Jones were amazing. They had the time and money to realize their vision. They had 1400 fewer shots to make than Top Gun Maverick. (Jurassic Park only had 63.)

They also understood their limitations and didn't try to force the CG to do something it wasn't ready for yet.

“i think you were a barista in another life” ☕️🌟