Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews of Movies, TV, and Games

The Game of Thrones Finale: A Fitting End to a Subpar Season

Television Reviews
game of thrones finale

Going into this final season, I feel like the Game of Thrones writers had two choices: they could either follow through on what was dramatically satisfying for the show, or intentionally subvert those expectations to make a point about the pursuit of power and the inevitability of corruption. The former ending is fairly predictable, but also feels right for the show: Jon Snow’s parentage is revealed, threatening Dany’s claim, but they get married to solidify their claim. Dany’s predilection toward “fire and blood” is tempered by the good people around her, including Jon Snow, just like it has been throughout the whole show. The prophecies about Azor Ahai/The Prince Who Was Promised all come true in the form of Jon Snow, the man born from fire and ice (as in, a Targaryen and a Stark), who ultimately defeats the Night King using Lightbringer, a sword forged in flame (you could even argue that Longclaw fits this description, since it’s made of Valyrian steel). Cersei and the throne is merely an afterthought, and she is ultimately killed by Jaime, who has turned over a new leaf and realizes that there will never be peace as long as his corrupt sister is in power (you know, what happened with Jon and Dany in the finale, basically).

But the showrunners (and, presumably, George RR Martin, although we can’t be sure) chose the other route. Instead, the prophecies were meaningless, and any similarities to events onscreen were just coincidences. Jon Snow’s parentage was a giant red herring, its pointlessness actually being the very point: that lineages are meaningless, and a terrible way to choose who should rule. Daenerys, who always showed an inclination toward violence and easy solutions, proved that absolute power corrupts absolutely when she chose mass murder over a well-considered approach to her rule. The White Walkers, despite being talked up in the previous season as the greatest danger the realm has ever seen, are dispatched halfway through the season and then rarely mentioned again. Jon technically does the right thing by killing Daenerys, but is punished for it, the way good deeds tend to be in this world.

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Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus Review

Video Game Reviews

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was never meant to be an “important” game. It’s the gloriously stupid follow-up to the similarly ridiculous Wolfenstein: The New Order. Like its predecessor, it features an alternate-1960s in which the Nazis won World War II, and you and your crew go about slaughtering said Nazis. Despite its ultra-violence, few considered the first game to be especially controversial. Surprise! That’s changed.

Unlike The New Order, the majority of Wolfenstein II takes place in America. This led to an ad campaign focused around, well, Nazis in America, which didn’t go well with certain corners of the internet. It was a situation that most companies would pull back from, but the game’s publisher, Bethesda, showed tremendous backbone by sticking to their guns and taking a bold “Nazis are bad” stance. So the game came out, the people who wouldn’t play have played the game anyway kept away, and the rest of us had a pretty great time.

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Blade Runner 2049

Movie Reviews

Like the original film, Blade Runner 2049 is intently focused on the question of what makes us human, inviting us to empathize with beings that were artificially created, but still feel. But where the original film zeroed in on the concepts of mortality and memory, 2049 expands its scope to include the concepts of subservience, purpose, physicality, and individuality. It does this by introducing new characters and subplots as thematic reference points, asking the audience to tackle them by degrees. It’s true that Blade Runner 2049 could have been pared down significantly from its 2-hour-45-minute runtime without losing anything central to the plot, but doing so would rob the film of the complexity that makes it so special.

I’m being vague here, because another element that helps make Blade Runner 2049 such a joy is its marketing, which doesn’t dictate even the most crucial plot and character details. There’s a reveal in the very first scene which had not been spoiled for me ahead of time, and it’s essentially the linchpin of the whole story. These moments come frequently throughout the film, the world becoming larger and more complicated as the story draws the viewer deeper and deeper. I would hate to spoil that experience with a block of text.

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mother! Review

Movie Reviews

(this review is spoiler free up to a certain point, in which I will give a prominent spoiler warning)

Discussing Darren Aronofsky’s mother! without spoiling the experience entirely is quite the challenge. Before seeing it, a single word in a “spoiler-free” review colored my expectations and made certain elements far more apparent than they should have been at that point in the film. This drastically altered my experience with the film, and not necessarily for the better.

I’ll try not to ruin anybody’s experience here, but it’s probably good to have some idea of what you’re getting into with mother! The Rosemary’s Baby-inspired trailers suggest a tense, psychological horror movie. It’s very much NOT that. It’s ostensibly a story about a woman dealing with her husband, a creatively constipated poet. They inhabit a large house in the middle of a field and begin receiving unexpected visitors, who he embraces and she grows tired of. Things continue to escalate until the movie begins to show its hand, and you either roll with it or you reject it entirely.

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