This is a tribute to the Justice Society: World War II film. The Flash is the fastest man alive except for when he isn’t but there aren’t a lot of fighters who can even come close to taking him on. Joe is good with his gun but that won’t be enough to stop the Flash here. Joe is a good ally who has helped Barry come a long way but ultimately in a fight that’s where it ends. Flash (Barry) wins.
This is a tribute to The Mummy’s Curse. Kharis is a strong Mummy and definitely knows how to take some good wins when he needs to, but the guy is way too slow to fight a martial artist. Lan Di would easily crush the guy with a few well placed blows. It would not be hard to land those hits at all and Kharis does not have the durability to tank them either. All in all, he’s fresh out of options here. Lan Di wins.
This is a tribute to The Mummy’s Ghost. As expected Kharis looked pretty bad in this film again as he was manipulated the whole time. You’d think that someone this well known and powerful would be able to do a little better but I suppose it just wasn’t in the cards. A bit of a shame but Muhyo will see to it that this guy is taken down and fast. There’s no way for Kharis to keep up and one spell will take him out. Muhyo wins.
This is a tribute to The Mummy’s Tomb. Kharis may seem like a reasonably tough Mummy but he’s incredibly slow which is a huge disadvantage in a fight. He would not be able to keep up with Ryo at all and would just end up getting steamrolled at every turn. This guy would get absolutely devastated before he even knew he was in a fight. Kharis may act like a big shot but he’s always taking orders and ultimately doesn’t have the combat experience to win this fight. Ryo Hazuki wins.
This is a tribute to the first Jeeper’s Creepers film. The Creeper has regeneration and he’s reasonably strong but ultimately he doesn’t have that flair a villain needs to really go into the next level. The guy barely has any real goals beyond general destruction and so Yomogi would show him a thing or too. Yomogi is a capable warrior and he’s not afraid to push his limits. Creeper won’t be doing much against him here. Yomogi Asanaka wins.
I’ve now started the Tiger & Bunny manga. It’s a pretty classic superhero story so far and has solid fundamentals. It’s a bit early to say how it’ll shake out so far but it’s a good read and I’ll have a review up once I have finished the series.
Overall 7/10
Man this editorial has been a long time coming. I’ve had it planned ever since I saw Ufotable’s Unlimited Blade Works adaption although I’d say the first inspiration was from Studio Deen’s fusion adaption of Fate plus the other routes. I had some issues getting the gifs set up and finally solved that issue yesterday. Now you may be thinking how can Saber be the most overrated character? Shouldn’t that be Gilgamesh? Well, I admit that a case can be made for Gilgamesh being overhyped as well. Particularly since the creator of the series said Gilgamesh is powerful enough to end the whole Grail War in a night if he felt so inclined, yet he gets served up every time the tournament starts. So I can see why that feeling would be there but he’s not going around losing to just anyone and that’s the big difference here. Let’s take a deep analysis of how Saber performs here and see if I can convince you that she is the most overrated character in Fate.
Now some quick rules of engagement here. For starters when I say overrated I’m talking about in universe not out of it. I think it might be similar both ways but I don’t keep up with the Fate fandom the same way I keep up with most others. The Reddit would be too dangerous with spoilers and such at this point. Additionally I am really focusing on the Unlimited Blade Works route as that is often considered to be the most iconic path of the series and is considered first when talking about Fate. Additionally, I haven’t seen Heaven’s Feel yet anyway. Now I will present my case.
Disclaimer: It goes without saying but this editorial will contain spoilers for Fate Stay Night, I will also be referencing Fate/Zero, and Fate Go to a small extent. If you have not watched these things or read the novel/web games, you’ll want to side step this editorial and check those out first. Thank you for stopping by though!
Of course, to show why she is overrated I must first establish how the show and characters hype her up from the start. You can’t pick apart a character if you don’t know how strong they were supposed to be at the start right? So Saber is the incarnation of King Arthur, a legend so great that I don’t need to explain here. To be more exact, a “Saber” is a class of servant summoned in the Holy Grail War. It is considered the most powerful class by a decent margin. No matter what series you watch, the characters are always talking about how they would want a Saber since that can end the war real quick. I’m just more used to calling Artoria, “Saber” since she is the most iconic servant in that class. So Saber is summoned in the strongest class and she is already supposed to be one of the more impressive legends.
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Now Fate has a ton of legends like Hercules, Medusa, Da Vinci, so I’m not saying King Arthur is the best but at the very least she is always treated as a top tier servant. Your legend plays a strong part in how powerful you are and the skills at your disposal. Saber has her famous Excalibur equipped and she even has her shield which regenerates her injuries and can even bring you back from the brink of death. Her Noble Phantasm is a powerful shockwave/energy blast which can rip the sky asunder. Her sword is also invisible by default which makes blocking it a lot more difficult.
So now we’ve gotten Saber’s skills into the mix here. Her legend is also solidified but now let’s talk about the hype that the characters give her. Rin throws a whole fit when she isn’t able to summon Saber because she knows that the balance of power has just shifted. Kiritsugu, the man with 100 plans took extra care to summon her because he knew this was the greatest path to winning the Grail War and the group he was with made sure to make this happen. Keep in mind that he desperately wants to win to achieve his ambitions and is generally considered to be one of the best strategists in the series and he admits that she is the strongest. It is established early on that Saber is quite crucial to at least having a great advantage in this whole tournament.
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Yet….that hype dies down almost immediately. Now Fate is a series that is huge in part because of how it treats most of its legends with such respect. People have fun seeing their culture’s champions actually getting to fight against the others and looking good. Aside from legends who are based on evil people like Jack The Ripper, each character usually gets to show off their ideals and fight rather well. So you’re never expecting a full stomp or anything like that but based on the hype of King Arthur and her strongest class, we are expecting that she should best all of these guys, especially if it’s a pure one on one fight right?
Well, her first fight upon being summoned is to fight Lancer and it’s fair to say right off the bat that she was on the losing side here. His ability to reverse cause and effect may not have destroyed her due to her passive ability to negate magical effects but he did land a hit and was still at full power and could have launched his Noble Phantasm again. Could she have blocked this with hers? It didn’t seem as if she would have the time but even if their blows canceled out, her lack of mana reserves would have come back to haunt her. She definitely loses this fight and this is when she is a freshly summoned servant against a guy who just finished battling with another powerful servant. So at full power she could not beat a weakened servant? That’s not great and this happens almost immediately in the series so I was surprised she did not do better.
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Next we are introduced to Hercules and this really did not help Saber’s case. He is introduced as someone with enough mana to destroy the rest of the servants even if they teamed up. Now that’s way too much hype and I don’t think anyone believed that for a second but it is still clear that he could beat Saber one on one and this is basically stated. In fact he does this with relative ease when you consider the fact that he won even when she was teaming up with Archer. So now that’s two fights where she did not look very good and we’re still in the opening segments of the war.
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Saber does defeat Rider rather easily when they fight one on one so I’ll give her that. Rider may not be the most powerful fighter out here but a win is a win so that’s still something to feel good about. Her next tough match was when she had to go up against Caster and her master Kuzuki. Now even I don’t buy this moment so I’ll cut her a bit of slack here but she actually gets crushed by a human. Kuzuki is able to block Saber’s attack and then goes into a combo that completely takes her out.
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Sure, he is amped up but that should not be nearly enough to compensate for the power of a servant. There’s just absolutely no way he should be able to beat Saber here and certainly not to do so with this much ease. That was just a bit much but I have to include it because this was Saber’s lowest moment. The fight should have gone the way the Kuzuki vs Archer battle went to be honest. Kuzuki was weakened at that point but it should have been that one sided.
I don’t have any qualms with Caster holding her own against Saber because magic is tough to fight against. I suspect Saber would win in a prolonged battle as well. Maybe she should have won easier but I can let that slide since the fight was interrupted and Shirou/hostages were getting in the way the whole time. With no distractions she could have won this and losses with hostages in the mix don’t count.
Assassin’s fight against Saber is definitely a critical one for my case here. He is the servant of another servant and isn’t even a real mythical hero. He is made up from a story and has some of the worst stats for a servant in the fate verse. He is skilled yes, but not so much so that he should be defeating Saber, the most powerful class of servant right? Well, he wins this fight with relative ease. Part of the issue is that Saber holds back for far too long but that’s a risk you take when underestimating the enemy so it doesn’t take away from his victory in the slightest.
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He just won with pure swordplay and perhaps the most impressive part here is that he had no super special abilities. Yes his ability to swing his sword apparently breaks the laws of reality and causes some kind of portal effect but it’s still him just swinging his swords really hard. He got underestimated and Saber paid the price. So that’s another loss to a servant right there which was not a good look for her.
We then get to the final battle where she goes up against Archer…and is getting absolutely dominated. So now is when I should address the common counter point which is that Saber only looks so weak because Shirou doesn’t have a lot of magical circuits so he is always limiting the flow of mana to Saber. A servant cannot fight for very long without a master after all and so you need a good one. There are two reasons this doesn’t hold up though. The first is that her opening battle against Lancer where she could not claim victory happened while she was at full power and was just summoned so mama would not be a concern yet.
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Then we’ve got the big nail in the coffin. It turns out that Archer didn’t have a master for a little while and yet he was able to fight well. He broke his pacts with Rin and Caster yet he was still able to overpower Saber initially and he was able to fight on par with Shirou. That’s lowballing him though, he was clearly winning and he still had enough mana to use his reality marble noble phantasm. So the lack of mana excuse from Saber doesn’t work so well since Archer had to fight without being given any mana and was still doing good. Saber only ends up taking the edge when she makes a new pact and gets her energy refilled to 100%. Before that moment both combatants had not been at full power but Archer had been in that state for a longer period of time so you felt like that should have been an easy win for Saber.
There’s also her fight against Gilgamesh where she was being overwhelmed in the first show but that one we don’t need to worry about since he would beat just about anyone. It only hurts from a hype perspective since Saber was introduced as the strongest class and yet she was quickly overtaken by Hercules and Gilgamesh who were both said to be more powerful as soon as they appeared. Saber’s hype just ended up vanishing as a result. Let’s just recap her track record here.
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She lost to Kuzuki, Archer, Gilgamesh, Assassin, and Hercules. She was losing to Lancer and the only one she flat out defeated was Rider who always seems like the weakest servant by far in Fate Stay Night. (A far cry from the hero in Fate/Zero who seemed to be one of the most powerful servants) This track record is not good for the servant who was hyped to be the most powerful one initially and this is why I choose her as the most overrated character in universe. She just did not end up clinching out the win when it counted and that’s a bad look for her. I expected so much more out of Saber from a power perspective and I don’t think that’s unreasonable given her stature. At least in Stay Night she did not live up to the hype.
I won’t really jump into the spin-offs much for this editorial but she tends to fare a bit better there. In Grand Order she seemed to have a good setup going but it’s hard to say how much was her strength and how much was Archer helping her out. In Fate/Zero she tends to do better as she fought well against Berserker and held her own with Lancer. Would she have lost the fight with Lancer? Perhaps but it’s hard to say since their fights kept getting interrupted but either way the showing was on point.
So that wraps up my case for why Saber is the most overrated character in Fate. I’d say the fights just speak for themselves and mainly this happens because the series hyped her up so much. If it did not and treated the Saber class as just any other then there wouldn’t be a problem. It would actually go for the underdog kind of feel then and I dare say that this would have worked out very smoothly. After all in the series it is safe to say that Saber is still equal to the others at best or slightly weaker at worst but either way there isn’t much of a gap there. So it doesn’t make sense why they give her so much hype. I do like Saber as a character but whenever someone mentions her as being one of the most powerful servants then it’s time to look at the fights and see if you agree.
Shenmue is a show based on a game series that I have not played, however you don’t really need to know them to enjoy the show since it re-adapts the sagas. I was impressed with the show right off the bat because it’s got a very retro vibe to it. I’d compare it to Batman Beyond and the classic superhero shows of the DCAU. Even the main character himself has that punk vibe like Terry. It’s a very short show so it hasn’t made it all the way to greatness yet but the way it adapted the events was definitely a lot of fun so hopefully we get a season 2 soon.
The show starts with Ryo being rather confident in his strength to the point where he doesn’t really take his father’s teachings very seriously. He ends up regretting that immediately as he heads home one day to witness a villain known as Lan Di murdering his father. Ryo tries to help but is instantly defeated and his confidence is shattered. He now wants to find out why his father was murdered and his only clue is a mysterious mirror. Ryo will have to ask around and get involved with a bunch of gangs as he tries to get closer to solving this mystery. With his heart clouded by vengeance can Ryo really get strong enough to stop Lan Di?
Shenmue is really a investigation show but what sets it apart from the rest is that Ryo’s not a pro. He’s not a hot shot detective who knows exactly what to do and how to do it. He’s just going around and almost literally knocking on doors and asking questions. Each episode will have him walk over and ask an old lady for help, she’ll tell him to go to the coffee shop, the coffee guy will say to flip some cups, he’ll then get mugged, then rinse and repeat. Ryo is really going around doing the same things a whole lot but it just works.
There is a level of convenience to this of course as he always ends up meeting the right people, but the fact that it’s so tedious on his end helps to at least make it not feel too easy. The guy definitely does still have to walk everywhere and he gets mugged a whole lot so it’s not like he’s taking 0 risks either. Ryo is a really good fighter but he’s in a world where expert fighters seem to be around every corner and so he gets crushed many times. Even by the end of the series you can tell that he’s nowhere close to the top yet.
I’d say my best complement for the series is just that it’s a lot of fun. It really captures that retro action show vibe. There’s no end of the world stakes, no fancy combos, or really anything out of the ordinary. This is purely a street level show with Ryo beating up on goons and getting closer to his father’s murderer. The show never tries to be anything more than that and it’s probably one of the most relaxing shows that I’ve watched in a while. The pacing was always on point with each episode.
I also enjoyed the animation quite a bit. It’s not going to touch the big titles like Bleach but the fight scenes were always solid. They used the sonic boom effect for each hit which I always liked. It’s something you don’t always see nowadays but it’s a good way to make each strike feel like it has a lot of impact. The fight scenes are always solid here and the show also goes all in on the eye effects to show when someone is focused. Apparently a lot of the attacks are even taken straight from the games which is a cool attention to detail. Smooth might be the best word for the animation. It’s not as bright and colorful as some of the others out there but the fights exceled as you could really follow each exchange and feel the power behind the hits. Sadly while the animation in the episodes is real good, the opening is one of the lazier ones. I’ll never get why you would decide to cheap out on the intro since that will appear for every episode.
There’s very little actual animation in the intro at all and it’s just rather boring which is never a good thing for an opening. A proper opening should fill you with energy and have you jumping up and down. This won’t do that for you at all. As for the soundtrack, I wasn’t particularly impressed there either. I didn’t really care for the intro song. There were some decent instrumental themes in the show itself but none that I can remember off the top of my head. I feel like they worked well enough in the scenes as you’re watching but it’s quite telling that I can’t remember them at all.
As for Ryo himself, I definitely liked him as the main character. He’s focused on avenging his father’s death but never lets it consume him. He takes a ton of losses throughout the series but is always striving to do better. One of the standout scenes to me was when he and and Lishao disagree on how he should go further. He doesn’t storm out of there or cause a scene. He just respectfully says that it appears they will not be able to see eye to eye on this and leaves.
He just walks out of there peacefully and still in good standing with the master. It’s so rare to see that and Ryo just comes across as a very mature main character. Perhaps not the smartest one with how often he lets his guard down but a very solid one all the same. He slowly gets stronger throughout the series and his final fight with Lan Di was satisfying even if I thought he would have done way better. He’s clearly still got a ways to go and hopefully we get a season 2 soon so we can see how things play out. I haven’t played the games yet but who knows, I may end up experiencing the saga that way first.
As for Lan Di as the main villain, he doesn’t appear a whole lot. Really it’s just the beginning and the ending where we see him but you can still get a solid glimpse into his character that way. The guy seems very honorable but someone who will also see his revenge through to the end. He was clearly not going to spare Ryo’s father no matter what and the guy has an entire criminal empire. The fact that he can fight so well was always going to be a good sign for his character because I love it when characters can fight like that and don’t have to hide behind their minions. Lan Di is the strongest we’ve seen in the series so far so it’s fitting that he be the final boss.
Nozomi was the main heroine for a while but she pretty much gets written out once Ryo leaves home. She was as helpful as she could be in the meantime though. Nozomi may not be a fighter but she looks out for Ryo as best she can and is a nice person in general. Then you have Joy who is the main heroine in Hong Kong. Joy has a lot more energy to her and also isn’t afraid to take some risks. I thought she was a fun character to have around and Ryo would have had a really tough time settling in without her helping to show him the ropes.
There’s a third heroine Shenhua for the latest land but she hasn’t really gotten to do anything yet so there’s not much to say about her. Right now she would be the weakest of the 3 heroines and we’ll need to see some more personality out of her to get higher. Something beyond just the vague prophecies but I expect her role in season 2 would be rather large so she’ll have plenty of time for that.
Guizhang was a really solid character and definitely one of Ryo’s best allies. It was a shame that he couldn’t follow Ryo into Hong Kong because I think he would have really done well there. The guy was pretty much on par with Ryo in terms of overall fighting ability and had a good head on his shoulders. The way he was written out wasn’t terribly satisfying but maybe he’ll be back someday.
Ren was his replacement of sorts in Hong Kong. This guy is more of an opportunist who loves money and wants to get rich but as the show goes on he starts to become more of a legitimate ally. He does come in handy a lot so while he starts off as the kind of guy who will backstab you at every turn, you grow to like him. He never passed Guizhang for me but it’s always good that Ryo doesn’t have to go through the adventure alone.
Then there’s Lishao who is the master of her Dojo and has the skills to back this up. She’s a very fun character and someone that all of the villains and heroes have to respect. When she’s around you have to take that into account because of her incredible power. She’s certainly one of the standout characters here and pretty much forces Ryo to improve his own skills. Without her there’s no way he would be prepared to stand a chance here.
Wong is a kid in Hong Kong who helps out a bit here and there but I wouldn’t say he was particularly all that great. He has a good character arc where he learns to stop being a thief but that’s about all that I would say for him. You’ve got two more villains in Yuan and Dou but I wasn’t a fan of either of them. Yuan can barely even fight which really huts his case. Dou was surprisingly powerful with how he was beating Ryo on multiple occasions though. He seemed like the slow type who could never hold his own in a fight so I suppose he got the last laugh on me there. It was still pretty embarrassing for Ryo to lose there though.
Technically there are a bunch of other supporting characters running around but this pretty much sums up the main cast. As Ryo has to try and learn all of the Wude (It’s pronounced Wuda but seems to be spelled Wude online for some reason) he meets a lot of characters who help him out. I think these practices can be a little overhyped and some cross the line into just being common sense. It’s a surprisingly long plot point that takes up a good chunk of the show but fortunately the show usually throws you some fight scenes so you have something to do in the meantime.
There was one villain that felt wasted though. He shows up at the very end of the show with a cool looking mask but is taken down in seconds. Why give the guy such a good design if you’re going to throw him out right? I suppose it was subversive but I would have much preferred to see this guy get a real fight. There was a whole lot of potential there without a doubt. Lan Di’s a great villain but he’s really the only good villain at the moment so I’d like to see a few other good ones get introduced soon to keep things fresh. That slippery minion from arc 1 would definitely beat the minions in Hong Kong.
The power levels in the show are also handled pretty well which is a nice benefit of everything being fairly low tier. Ryo starts out as someone who’s low even within the verse despite having a whole lot of confidence. It’s to the point where he has to be protected by Guixhang the whole time. By Hong Kong Ryo is strong enough to hold his own but definitely can’t beat the general and still gets mugged a lot. Once Ryo has learned all of the Wude he is now able to fight and defeat any non-master but would likely still lose to Lishao and definitely Lan Di. By season 2 I expect he should make even greater strides.
As I mentioned earlier, there was a lot of travelling in season 1. We mostly stuck to two different locations but as the show ends Ryo makes it to a third one as well. Then he’s always going to a bunch of different shops for clues and everything. It’ll be interesting to see if this continues into the next season. I assume it will since Ryo still doesn’t have an easy way of finding things out aside from asking everybody and following each lead. So how strong the region will be will depend on how good the supporting cast is.
Without the Wude to worry about we can also go back to more basic Shenmue investigation like Ryo heading back to the coffee houses and things like that. It’s just nice to see how nonchalant the whole thing is and I can’t stress that enough because it feels so unique in a show. I can’t think of any other time I’ve seen a main character have to check out so many places to follow through on his leads. Of course it could go in a different direction so we’ll see but as long as the show keeps its calm vibe I expect it’ll continue to be a blast. Naturally you also have to keep up the fun martial arts for the battles and I feel like Ryo needs a new super move. He has two now between the elbow hit and the axe kick but I think some kind of punch would suit him the best.
Overall, Shenmue is a very fun action show. It’s extremely low key and is more of a calm title despite the action genre but it works well. If you want to watch something that just feels nostalgic even though it’s a story you haven’t seen before then this is definitely the one to check out. For season 2 I suppose what I would like to see are some longer boss fights and for Ryo to keep his training. I can understand him forgetting the Wude when fighting Lan Di because of his grudge but you can’t use the same excuse next time. So I want a proper fight where Ryo has to give it his all. That would make for a very climactic battle and the pieces should all be in place to make that possible.
Overall 7/10
This review is of the edited TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative
When you’ve got a film with the heroes trying to stop a mass murderer you can often come up against the rather tricky dilemma of establishing this plot while trying not to let things get too dark. Having a psycho be the main villain usually makes this quite impossible though and this film was not able to survive it. It definitely gets twisted for all parties involved and with no real winners here you’re going to want to skip this one.
The movie starts with William getting ready for retirement. He’s had a good career on the force but it’s time to call it a day. Unfortunately his plans are slowed when a mass murderer shows up and starts creating headlines. William is paired with a younger detective known as David who is eager to prove himself here while William just wants out. They do not get along at all with William constantly pushing David. Still, the two will have to get their act together and quickly or this John Doe will continue his murder spree. The only pattern so far is that he’s murdering people along the line of the 7 Deadly Sin. Each of his murders are then stylized based on that.
You feel bad for William because of course something like this had to happen right when he was about to retire. Couldn’t have waited just a few more days right? Now in a way he can’t walk out because if he does it’ll be like he ran away from the case and he’ll probably also be living with a lot of guilt. William is incredibly jaded by this point as well since he’s been working in such a corrupt city for so long. He sees awful crimes every day and at this point doesn’t see a lot of hope left for humanity. There’s nothing left here for him if he stays on the job.
Unfortunately he’s also the best detective around and he knows this very well. Part of why he’s so antagonistic to David at first seems to be to try to get him out of here. He’s concerned why David specifically volunteered to enlist here and the guy never really gives him a straight answer which doesn’t help matters. Meanwhile David’s more of an optimist who thinks he can make the world better one case at a time. He’s got a lot of energy and definitely wants to prove himself. He means well and makes for a good main character. I actually thought he was a little better than William here.
Sure, William is more talented but the fact that he is so jaded means that he just isn’t enthusiastic about anything anymore. At least David is doing his best at all times to make sure that things go well. Then you have David’s wife Tracy who is not happy about being here at all. She would rather be in just about any city but came along because she wanted to be supportive at all times. She’s definitely well meaning in that respect but it would have been best to have a full conversation with him about it. Even their apartment is in rough shape and shakes whenever a train approaches. It would be very difficult to live like that for very long.
The actual villain “John” is your average psycho so there’s not a lot to say about him. He wants to see the world burn and to bring everyone to his level. He has a whole methodology on how he murders everyone but also enjoys it quite a lot and gets called out by the main characters. At the end of the day he’s just a criminal who has to be stopped. The guy has a lot of plans and certainly gets around but you’re just hoping he’ll be caught pretty soon.
One common issue with these kind of films is how much the villain gets away with before being taken down though. There are 7 deadly sins so you would hope the heroes could stop him after maybe 3 right? Really show how they prevented a tragedy but no, you quickly realize that he’s going to get all the way down the list so by the time he’s stopped, he’s already won in a sense. The film is definitely going for a very tragic ending with how this all plays out. There’s definitely no happiness to be found here that’s for sure.
The film takes a little time out to show how crazy parts of the legal system can be though with the villain admitting that he’ll just plead insanity if they actually try him in court. Since recordings outside of the court room don’t count he can blatantly admit to being the murderer as often as he wants but it won’t count. The whole thing definitely feels really crazy and I feel like the film was trying to point out how absurd the whole thing is. It’s unfortunately realistic in that sense. Sure, there’s a chance the heroes could win in court but it would all be a gamble so even by the end they’re playing to the villain’s tune.
Throughout the movie you’ve got a very heavy atmosphere since each of the deaths are so tragic. Each person is murdered in increasingly disturbing ways so it’s not like the murders were even quick or anything like that. Most of the murders aren’t on screen which is good at least but you do always see the aftermath and know what went down. It’s definitely not a film you’ll want to check out if you prefer to avoid the darker elements like that.
In the end that’s why the film can’t succeed. You ideally want a film where the heroes win and save the day on a fun adventure or if you’re going the darker route, have a villain who wins but has interesting ideals or the murders are quick and matter of fact. The more deranged you make the villain, the less likely the film is to succeed because it’s just going way too far the whole time. You don’t have time to enjoy the film because you’re constantly getting hit with these moments.
Overall, Se7en is a film you’ll want to avoid. It’s a rather gritty film where there are no winning battles. You can easily see why Williams is so jaded because every time he solves a case and sees these horrors, he has to know that more atrocities are being committed at the same time. After a while you just feel like giving up and that’s pretty much what happened to him. If you want to see a murder mystery film that reigns it in a lot more you’ll want to check out something like Clue instead. You’ve still got a lot of those themes and elements but without all the extra details that you’d rather not see.
Overall 3/10
It’s never a good thing when you become bigger than life because that means that your ego is probably something you haven’t kept in check. This film has something like that happen to the main character but it’s not ego in this case. Instead it comes through not following the proper dosage on a drug and things get a little dicey. It’s why following the instructions for anything is so crucial.
The movie starts with showing us how sick Ed is. He’s been having seizures and fainting spells as of late so he is taken to the hospital and the prognosis is not very good. Ed will be dead in short order unless he tries an experimental treatment which could bump him off as well. It’s his best and only option though so he goes through with it. At first things appear to be fine but slowly Ed begins to go more and more insane to the point where even his family barely recognize him. Will Ed be okay or was this one case where the cure is deadlier than the condition?
Now, I mentioned that the issue is with Ed taking too much Corazon but even before that he started going a bit off the deep end. Sure this sped it up but based on how it appeared, he would have gone crazy sooner or later while taking these. Nowadays it’s more of a mainstream drug and I know it’s used on a lot of things so at least the going crazy part isn’t happening now.
Ed’s wife Lou doesn’t handle this too well the whole time though. On one hand she is trying to back up her husband at every turn which is admirable but it goes too far when he starts becoming a danger to everyone around them and she doesn’t act. He becomes quite harsh with their kid and starts acting like a drill sergeant. He doesn’t treat her very kindly half the time either and by the time she is finally ready to acknowledge that he is crazy..he is completely off his rocket. Her final plan also wasn’t subtle enough which nearly cost her everything.
The story has a happy ending but she didn’t contribute to that too much. She also should have been a lot nicer to Wally who just did his best to keep her in the loop and offer advice. She was rarely if ever grateful at all. Its fortunate that he was around in the end or thing would not have gone very well at all. Wally was easily my favorite character here. No matter how many verbal shots he took, the guy just kept trying to help anyway. Now that’s a really good friend.
As for the kid Richie, he’s not old enough to be able to do much of anything in this scenario anyway. He’s not a very interesting character and eventually also gets to his breaking point but there’s just no way for him to really impact the story. I don’t think you even needed him in the film since it doesn’t change much. You could have Ed threaten someone else instead for the same effect.
As for Ed, well it’s hard to like him here since he was taken over so completely by the drug and cracked. It’s too bad there weren’t at least scenes of him trying to fight it or we could see in his mind as the two sides of him fought. Instead since the brain washing was so complete and immediate, the only thing you can assume here is that he didn’t have the willpower to resist this. Hopefully he is able to stay strong now but for the majority of the film he’s effectively the antagonist.
The movie doesn’t have a very fun feeling to it the whole time either because of this. It’s either the characters running away from Ed or he’s just acting off. There aren’t a lot of light hearted moments after the first few scenes. The ones we do get later on are almost always interrupted into a more tense moment.
If the character cast was better then it would help the movie for sure. Instead this just ends up being a movie that you will get through but you probably won’t be recommending very high. It doesn’t really have any replay value either. The writing is good but the characters aren’t so it’s not really able to take full advantage of that. Some of the drama can also be a bit forced like Ed not letting Lou know about his part time job. While he indicated that she wouldn’t be happy about it, that’s not consistent with her character at all. Seems to me like she would not have thought that it was a very big deal at all.
So Ed’s perception may have already been a little off here. He was adding on extra stress to himself that he just didn’t need. Once he turned crazy he would certainly start making a lot of scenes like at the school and when he started to read his Bible but before that it didn’t seem like he had enough trust in Lou. If he had confided in her earlier and more often then she may have been able to help him get around the side effects right from the start. It’s why you can’t always go it alone in these things or you may end up being down and out.
Overall, Bigger Than Life is an emotional film about losing control of your mind. It’s definitely going for a pretty serious vibe and succeeds at that but as a result the movie just doesn’t have a lot of charm to it. You can get by without charm if the story is just that epic and engaging but this isn’t even that kind of adventure. It’s more of a low key story as the characters try their best to get through this tough period and there’s just not a whole lot of reasons to watch this one. It’s not bad and if you’re up for a more somber film then it’s worth a shot but you can definitely find something else to check out.
Overall 5/10
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