Tag: Tessa Thompson

Westworld Season Four Review: A Temporary Return to Form.

Beginning Season Four of Westworld, I was not sure what to expect.
I had loved the first two seasons but found Season Three to be a drop in quality, and I hoped that Season Four would return the show to its former glory.
For a time, it did exactly this, before falling back into old mistakes.
The Fourth Season picks up years after the events of Season Three, with various characters in different situations.
Caleb Nichols (Aaron Paul) now has a family but after they are threatened by Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) and host William (Ed Harris), he teams up with Maeve (Thandie Newton) to take the two down once and for all.
Meanwhile, Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) awakens from his journey in the Sublime and, armed with knowledge of what is now to come, goes on a mission with Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) to save the fates of humanity and the hosts.
Most mysterious of all, a new version of Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), named Christina, is working at a video game company, yet slowly coming to realize that there is more to her world than it seems. 

Dolores is somehow back in Season Four. Her storyline across the season gradually reveals why this is, to mixed results by the end.

The first episode which established the various plot lines admittedly did very little to grab me.
Episodes Two and Four, however, did a much better job of getting me back into the show, and this all built up to Episode Four, “Generation Loss”, which got me back on the Westworld hype train.
“Generation Loss” made me feel the exact same way I did when watching the first two seasons of the show and the subsequent episodes kept up this level of engagement, supported by the great score from Ramin Djawadi, and fantastic performances from practically every cast member.
Of the old cast, the best of the bunch is definitely Aaron Paul, who delivers an amazing performance throughout as Caleb. 

Aaron Paul’s performance this season is among the best in all of Westworld.

As for the new characters, Aurora Perrineau is a welcome edition to the cast and I liked her role and performance.
Then there is the returning cast from the older seasons where, surprisingly, I would say that Teddy (James Marsden) really stands out.
I was someone who was not attatched to the character all that much in the first two seasons but he was honestly one of my favourite this season.

The first few episodes featuring Teddy made me care about him more than the first two seasons of Westworld ever did.

What with all of the great acting and story telling from Episode Four onwards, I was expecting Season Four of Westworld to have a great ending, which would at least put it on par with Season Two for me.
Then we got the last two episodes, which dropped the ball, in my opinion.
I was really not a fan of the direction these last two episodes went, as it felt like they had twists just for the sake of having them.
A lot of the character fates also felt quite stupid, in particular Maeve’s and Stubbs’.

The way Stubbs’ character concluded for this season was both abrupt and unceremonious.

Not to mention there was a lot of convenience in the final episodes, with quite a few fights in the final episode suffering from bad logic.
As for the ending of the season itself, it left me feeling as lukewarm as the ending to Season Three did.
All in all, this made Season Four quite the conflicting experience for me.
It started off slow but, by Episode Four, felt like it had reached the same high quality of the first two seasons, only to stumble at the finish line with the last two episodes.
I would rank Season Four above Season Three but below Seasons One and Two.
I just hope Season Five can be great throughout but, at this point, I would not hold my breath. 

Thor: Love and Thunder Review: The Flanderization of Thor.

When Thor: Ragnarok came out, it was hailed as one of the best films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
While I did enjoy the film, I said in my review that is was overhyped and not quite the masterpiece it was being made out to be.
The reception to the sequel, Thor: Love and Thunder, is far more critical and, honestly, I think it is especially deserving of it.
I did still like the movie but the more I think about it, the more problems I have with it.
Directed by Taika Waititi, Thor: Love and Thunder sees the God of Thunder (Chris Hemsworth) go his separate ways from the Guardians of the Galaxy, after learning that multiple gods have been killed by a villain named Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale).
To stop him, Thor teams up with old friends from Ragnarok,  Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) and Korg (Waititi), and, most surprising of all, his ex-girlfriend, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who has somehow gained Thor’s ability to wield Mjolnir. 

I liked the role Jane Foster played in this movie’s story.

The rekindling relationship between Thor and Jane is well written and acted, in my opinion, with it being my favourite part about both characters in this movie.
Unfortunately, it is one of the only good things about said characters, as most of them are flanderized to comedic extremes, especially Thor, who is portrayed as a giant idiot the entire movie, who seemingly forgot most of his character development in previous films.

Thor in Love and Thunder is like a dumber version of himself from the first movie before he had his character arc.

Despite my problems with Ragnarok, looking back, it did do a pretty good job of blending the humor with the serious scenes.
This is not the case with Love and Thunder, since it is entirely focused on constant jokes, only half of which made the audience I was watching the film with actually laugh.
It is especially jarring when the movie is dealing with subject matter that should be serious, yet it is played off for a bad joke.
These moments should have been played serious, like the scenes with Gorr, which are undoubtedly the best part of the film, mostly due to the characters’ writing and Bale’s fantastic performance.
That being said, for someone called “Gorr the God Butcher” Gorr hardly did any god butchering in this movie so he felt wasted.

Gorr really did not live up to his name of “The God Butcher.”

What ultimately saves the movie from these massive issues for me is that the action is mostly well executed, some character placement issues aside, and the ending is actually quite good.
I expected a deus ex machina to occur that would result in a completely happy ending without consequence for Thor, so I was pleasantly surprised when something else happened.
It was not enough to entirely save the movie because, as I have said, it still has a lot of issues, but it was enough for me to call Love and Thunder a fun time.
If you go into it expecting the film to take what happens seriously, it’s going to majorly fail for you, but if you go in expecting to turn your brain off and enjoy some action and maybe get a couple of laughs it will work.