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Since we're all talking about the Cornetto trilogy, if I'm to be totally honest, I don't care much for Shaun of the Dead. I remembered really liking it the first time I saw it, but on a rewatch, most of my laugh moments were at the end, and there was too much waiting for the pay off. I think some of it is that I hate almost every zombie movie, so an homage doesn't do anything for me, and some of it is that most zombie flicks are already so close to self-parody, that an actual self-parody feels a little robbed of its punch. I love Hot Fuzz, though. It has enough little moments to get you to the ending, which is a great payoff, and it has a great cast to back it up. It helps to have seen a few of the American cop films just before watching it and to pay attention to the list of things they talk about at the beginning and how they work all of them in later. I haven't seen World's End, but my plan is to go into it with low expectations and probably enjoy it a great deal.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:11
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Hot Fuzz has a load of interchangable villagers that the film thinks we remember for some reasonBicyclops posted:and some of it is that most zombie flicks are already so close to self-parody Say it aint so https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKWpR1b-2Ac
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Jan 20, 2015 18:23
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if you watch Hot Fuzz more than once (and you should watch it at least 3 times, PLUS once for every commentary track) then all the villagers become memorable and great.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:31
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Shaun is definitely overrated as hell but it led to Fuzz which has one of the tightest comedy scripts ever and is just a comedic masterpiece all-round so it's all good
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Jan 20, 2015 18:33
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Hot Fuzz is as good as Ghostbusters.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:34
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DoctorWhat posted:Hot Fuzz is as good as Ghostbusters. My God, man! You can't just pop open a can of worms like that when we're still in the middle of sifting through the last wormcan explosion. What if somebody starts comparing it to its sequels or the cartoon comes up? What if the Ramis/Murray thing becomes a discussion, or people start complaining about the reboot? Next thing you know, we're all kneedeep in Crystal Skull vodka and Buzzfeed articles about Ecto-Cooler Hi-C. Are you some sort of chaos wizard?
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Jan 20, 2015 18:37
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OK now this thread is about Ghostbusters.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:40
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Bicyclops posted:My God, man! You can't just pop open a can of worms like that when we're still in the middle of sifting through the last wormcan explosion. What if somebody starts comparing it to its sequels or the cartoon comes up? What if the Ramis/Murray thing becomes a discussion, or people start complaining about the reboot? Next thing you know, we're all kneedeep in Crystal Skull vodka and Buzzfeed articles about Ecto-Cooler Hi-C. Are you some sort of chaos wizard? It does not constitute Chaos Wizardry if you're simply stating the facts. That's not to say I'm not a Chaos Wizard, but you don't need to be one to recognize how good Hot Fuzz is.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:41
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Bicyclops posted:My God, man! You can't just pop open a can of worms like that when we're still in the middle of sifting through the last wormcan explosion. What if somebody starts comparing it to its sequels or the cartoon comes up? What if the Ramis/Murray thing becomes a discussion, or people start complaining about the reboot? Next thing you know, we're all kneedeep in Crystal Skull vodka and Buzzfeed articles about Ecto-Cooler Hi-C. Are you some sort of chaos wizard? I don't hate shia lebouf and don't get why nerds think its very important to let everyone know how much they hate him
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Jan 20, 2015 18:41
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The novel I'm shipping around had a Ghostbusters reference in it, because I assumed it was one of those movies like Titanic that young adults would just have in their repertoire, as a classic shown to them by their parents, and I have learned, sadly, that it is pretty much just the generation of people who were alive when it came out who know anything about it, and it is largely forgotten. I changed it to a Pokemon reference.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:43
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Little_wh0re posted:I don't hate shia lebouf and don't get why nerds think its very important to let everyone know how much they hate him WAIT! HE ISN'T DEAD! SHIA SURPRISE! Bicyclops posted:The novel I'm shipping around had a Ghostbusters reference in it, because I assumed it was one of those movies like Titanic that young adults would just have in their repertoire, as a classic shown to them by their parents, and I have learned, sadly, that it is pretty much just the generation of people who were alive when it came out who know anything about it, and it is largely forgotten. I changed it to a Pokemon reference. 
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Jan 20, 2015 18:43
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Ghostbusters....I mean it's not horrible
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Jan 20, 2015 18:45
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well now i don't have any problems with moffat ever, just on principal, because I can never agree with Bown about anything again
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Jan 20, 2015 18:46
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It was kind of endearing how long Dan Ackroyd would do the talk show circuit periodically and reveal that the movie was in the works, with everyone having signed off on the screenplay, and he'd cast some famous popular actress, and then everyone else involved would be like "Actually, that was the very first we'd heard about it and Bill Murray would rather leap into a ravine than work with Harold or do another Ghostbusters film, but best of luck to Danny." Like after Harold Ramis died, I fully expected Dan to be like "Good news! We've got a screenplay together with the entire original cast. I spoke personally with Harold's ghost via my medium, and he will be in the movie as Egon's spirit. Bill is really excited about the script, and Jennifer Lawrence has signed on as well."
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Jan 20, 2015 18:48
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Is it wrong that I prefer Ghostbusters II? Nichols (I think that's his name, the guy from Ally Mcbeal and Numbers) is pretty funny.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:50
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John Hodgman has a bit about Crystal Skull Vodka and GB3 in his third Complete World Knowledge book and it's hysterical. As an aside, the entire Complete World Knowledge trilogy is incredible, and is even better on audio, because John Hodgman's voice and the INCREDIBLY HIGH production values and guest roles and expansion of the book material is really really great. Kurtofan posted:Is it wrong if I prefer Ghostbusters II? GBII has stuff going for it, including the Do/Ray/Egon joke.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:50
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Kurtofan posted:Is it wrong that I prefer Ghostbusters II? There's a guy who will come in and tell you why you are definitively wrong and talk about the way the first one is made with the purple filter and everything. I think the first one is better if only because the second one is just the first one with a reset button, but I can understand how some people might prefer number 2 for Yanosh.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:52
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Bicyclops posted:My God, man! You can't just pop open a can of worms like that when we're still in the middle of sifting through the last wormcan explosion. What if somebody starts comparing it to its sequels or the cartoon comes up? What if the Ramis/Murray thing becomes a discussion, or people start complaining about the reboot? Next thing you know, we're all kneedeep in Crystal Skull vodka and Buzzfeed articles about Ecto-Cooler Hi-C. Are you some sort of chaos wizard? So what you're saying is that this is going to be the Homestuck 2.5 thread. Cool, I'll go grab the grids
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Jan 20, 2015 18:54
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Bicyclops posted:The novel I'm shipping around had a Ghostbusters reference in it, because I assumed it was one of those movies like Titanic that young adults would just have in their repertoire, as a classic shown to them by their parents, and I have learned, sadly, that it is pretty much just the generation of people who were alive when it came out who know anything about it, and it is largely forgotten. I changed it to a Pokemon reference.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:56
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DoctorWhat posted:As an aside, the entire Complete World Knowledge trilogy is incredible, and is even better on audio, because John Hodgman's voice and the INCREDIBLY HIGH production values and guest roles and expansion of the book material is really really great. Seconding this. The books are good, but the audiobooks are way better. Calling them "audiobooks" is almost doing them a disservice. They're more than that. I heard the audio versions first and honestly didn't know how they would work in printed form.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:57
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Ghostbusters is S-Tier. Hot Fuzz and The World's End are A-Tier. Shaun of the Dead is a solid B+ player.
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Jan 20, 2015 18:59
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Diabolik900 posted:Seconding this. The books are good, but the audiobooks are way better. Calling them "audiobooks" is almost doing them a disservice. They're more than that. I heard the audio versions first and honestly didn't know how they would work in printed form. They're pretty funny books, and many of the tables have more/better jokes as text, and the endless lists of names are way better as actual books, but the page-a-day calender stuff is incredible in audio and the overall productions are just incredible. Anyone who likes Big Finish or Night Vale should listen to them.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:00
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DoctorWhat posted:well now i don't have any problems with moffat ever, just on principal, because I can never agree with Bown about anything again it's just not that funny a movie, man. it has like a billion flaws. it's just that somewhere along the line it got canonised as "essential" so nobody is allowed to say it's anything other than amazing because then you get....posts like yours.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:01
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armoredgorilla posted:Ghostbusters is S-Tier. Hot Fuzz has Timothy Dalton giving Pegg and Frost the ol' Rassilon Razzle-Dazzle-on and is therefore in S-tier. Bown posted:it's just not that funny a movie, man. it has like a billion flaws. it's just that somewhere along the line it got canonised as "essential" so nobody is allowed to say it's anything other than amazing because then you get....posts like yours. it's actually extremely funny all the time.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:02
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Bown posted:it's just not that funny a movie, man. it has like a billion flaws. it's just that somewhere along the line it got canonised as "essential" so nobody is allowed to say it's anything other than amazing because then you get....posts like yours. He's agreeing with you, you fool! e: oh, nm, it is I who am the fool.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:02
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armoredgorilla posted:Ghostbusters is S-Tier. Groundhog Day is the best movie about time travel ever. Second best? Time After Time for DAVID loving WARNER.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:04
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Can we just read the next review now?
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Jan 20, 2015 19:05
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Groundhog Day is a much better Bill Murray movie than Ghostbusters. 
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Jan 20, 2015 19:06
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Bown posted:Groundhog Day is a much better Bill Murray movie than Ghostbusters. I agree with this, but only because CobiWann posted:Groundhog Day is the best movie about time travel ever. and also just one of my favorite movies of all time, even if it is on television pretty much all of the time and has been hyped to death. It deserves all of the hype.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:07
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Bown posted:Groundhog Day is a much better Bill Murray movie than Ghostbusters. Agreed, Murray actually puts in an effort in Groundhog Day. Ghostbusters is still the better overall film, but it's a close one. All up in S-Tier, along with Hot Fuzz and, um, I dunno, The Princess Bride.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:08
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The Princess Bride is some unheard of tier above S. It's basically perfect.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:12
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In fact, one of the few really glaring flaws of original Ghostbusters is that Bill Murray's character is dated. He comes off as an insufferable creep and the scene where he tries hitting on Dana in her apartment makes my skin crawl. In Groundhog Day, he is supposed to be a creep and very, very slowly learns that he is and changes his ways. e: armoredgorilla posted:The Princess Bride is some unheard of tier above S. Now we're just talking about movies that we all love from the late 80s and early 90s, but I absolutely fell in love with this book when my high school sweetheart lent it to me as a subtle way of saying that I might want to ask her out. We broke up and it was terrible, of course, but it's still my favorite book for sentimental reasons. Most people like the movie more, and I understand why, because the book is a little over-cluttered by the Ruriturian parody jokes and typical Goldman "Check out these Hollywood types!" stuff, but the book will always be my favorite. Bicyclops fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jan 20, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 19:12
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armoredgorilla posted:The Princess Bride is some unheard of tier above S. imma have to dig up my DVD of it now.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:16
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I love the book and the film of The Princess Bride just about equally, but for different reasons.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:25
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I was going to make a joke about reading the original Morgenstern, but besides that everyone is tired of that now, I just can't muster the energy anymore. I hold out hope that Goldman has a full version of Buttercup's Baby that is set to publish after his death and that it will coincide with some high school reunion in which I can see some people and say "Hey, we're all old and married and stuff, maybe let's put all that bad blood we had behind us and hang out sometime," but I don't suppose either thing will happen. Oh well, life isn't fair. 
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Jan 20, 2015 19:31
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Ghostbusters is great, but I don't laugh when I watch it anymore. I think I've seen it too many times. Ghostbusters 2 is pretty good as well.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:39
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I need to rewatch the Worlds End, but I adore them all. I am a huge zombie movie fan, and Shaun of the Dead is basically a really earnest zombie movie that happens to be funny. If you aren't that big into zombie movies, you're out of luck. I'm a huge action movie fan, and Hot Fuzz is basically a really earnest action movie that happens to be hilarious and amazing and well written. You have no soul if you don't like it. And Worlds End I have to rewatch but I remember loving the hell out of it as a quasi horror action comedy.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:45
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Doctor Who "The Vampires of Venice" Series 5, Episode 6 Rory Williams, as a character, is one that comes with an extraordinary amount of baggage, before he even gets the chance to properly join the TARDIS crew. The similarities between Rose Tyler and Amy Pond are pretty obvious, but filter down to all aspects of each respective character; both are their respective showrunner's, RTD's and Moffat's, first Companions, both are dimensionalized over the course of their arcs via, largely, their romantic affections for The Doctor. And, of course, both of them have major love interests they leave behind when beginning their adventures with The Doctor, both of whom eventually end up as Companions for The Doctor themselves: Noel Clarke's Mickey Smith, and here, Arthur Darvill's Rory Williams. Now between both Oxx and I we've gone at length- at ludicrous, exhaustive, overly verbose length -about the myriad failures Rose's arc had during the RTD era, but less attention has been given to the failures Davies made when introducing the second major Companion the show had, in Mickey Smith. Part of that is because of how immaterial Mickey's run and effect on the overall narrative of Who ended up being. Mickey was shoved into a pointless, largely ineffectual three-episode arc in the middle of Series Two mostly because, it seems, he desperately needed a way to stall Ten and Rose's grating will-they-won't-they in a way that didn't feel as artificial as nothing happening for no reason. Like, that's the only real narrative reason why I could see Mickey being brought back on as full-time Companion in the first place; his tenure was so short, and his importance to the narrative of any of the stories being told was so minor, (Did he even do anything in any of the three episodes he was on that ended up being plot-crucial? "Girl in the Fireplace" mostly consists of him making fun of Rose for being on the receiving end of being shut out from having her feelings reciprocated for once, and the Cybermen two-parter makes an explicit point that both him and the alternate universe version of himself are totally, completely useless. I guess he does that thing with steering the airship right? That's his one moment of usefulness in two seasons on the show?) the only reasonable conclusion one could draw about why he was included was to be a plot device that arrested other characters' advancement with a pulse. The most damning reason why Oxx and I haven't made much hay about the awfulness of Mickey's character, even though it's almost laughably easy to do so, is because it would be so utterly pointless. Mickey as a Companion and character was so immaterial, so poorly introduced and subsequently dimensionalized, so badly treated by the overall narrative told that analyzing how and why RTD hosed up Mickey Smith would be like analyzing a puff of smoke. It was barely there in the first place and is soon gone, so who the gently caress cares right? But now, it's relevant, so let's get into it. As aforementioned, Rory carries a lot of baggage when he's introduced, and this is entirely due to how badly Mickey was treated during RTD's run. Introduced as a boring dullard in "Rose", Mickey comes across even in his first episode as someone Rose, who in her titular episode comes off as a bit of an idiot, would be very very lucky to leave. This is largely intentional- "Rose" makes a firm point of establishing how much more vibrant and interesting of a male figure in Rose's life The Doctor is than Mickey, and there's a heavy subtext that Mickey is holding Rose back from her destiny. It's not just that Rose is leaving a mundane, safe, largely unremarkable life behind- she's being hamstrung by the people around her, she's Meant to Be Great and it's people like her mother and most importantly, Mickey that's preventing this path laid out for her. Mickey is not just ignorant (which in and of itself, is not a negative trait; being content and not knowing things isn't a character flaw, if anything being able to be happy with your specific lot in life is almost aspirational), he's incurious; he doesn't know stuff and doesn't want to know stuff, which on a show about the wondrous possibilities of infinity is the biggest possible character flaw one could have. And then there's the problems with how "Rose" treats Mickey script-wise, a trend that would unfortunately get more pronounced as the seasons continued. Mickey ends up being swallowed by a hungry trash can before being turned into the most unconvincing Replicant the world has ever seen, yelling about "PIZZZZZZZZZZA!" Even by the end of his first episode, Mickey's been turned into a walking punchline; Rose's big goodbye to him mostly consists of her laying a sweet iceburn on him for how much of a loser he is. The episode, of course, endlessly reinforces the defining narrative of Mickey for his entire run on the show: Yo that guy loving sucks. Make sure to make fun of him, he can't do anything right. He really can't; the parts of his personality and arc that aren't negative are just pathetic. He's a spineless, weak-willed twerp; he desperately hangs onto Rose and continually tries to get into her good graces, even despite having been investigated for murder due to her careless year-walk with The Doctor. The few times Rose reappears to Mickey's time before he ends up joining the team, he ends up bending over backward to help her, despite Rose's clear lack of any real interest or even basic empathy for his struggles. It's not even the fact that they're ostensibly boyfriend and girlfriend and Rose doesn't treat him like that; it's that they're not even friends, since friendship implies a level of emotional investment on both parties involved that Rose is unwilling to give. Mickey is basically Rose's servant, through and through, and exists to simply do the stuff Rose either can't or doesn't want to do whenever she deigns to visit him in his time. When Mickey isn't awful, and isn't a loser, he's completely bland; he has no real personality because RTD decides to never give him one. He's unbuttered toast, unflavored oatmeal; he's, as Oxx said once in one of his reviews, a person-shaped hole in space. Even on a technical level Mickey ends up treated poorly; he's a bad character, to be sure, but the scripts that he is given makes him worse, and his actor leaves much to be desired, and that's putting it really really lightly. The worst part of Mickey, though, is how the show wants the audience to view him. At every moment, with everything that happens to him, the show is firmly of the opinion that he not only deserved it, but that it would be a worse not treating him that way. Everything that happens to Mickey is treated in-universe as right and just, and he becomes a sick punchline to every mean-spirited joke The Doctor or Rose has by his introduction. Because, yes, let's talk his introduction, too: Mickey's initial episode, "School Reunion", is a generally pretty-bad episode of television, to be sure, but Mickey's joining-the-TARDIS episode is one in which he's less important to the overall narrative than, literally speaking, a robot dog from the loving 1970s. Because that's his grand moment of joining The Doctor and Rose; it's one in which he realizes that he's truly, utterly, wretchedly useless, to everyone, everywhere, at all times, and the only reason- the literal only reason -he begs- begs -to join them is to hopefully become useful for once in his miserable life. Even in his moment of redemption, in his one moment of clarity and insight on the show, the whole moment is undercut by the reinforcement that he's completely unnecessary. And this is Mickey's legacy; he persists on the show for three more episodes, serving only to make snide and transparently jealous statements about the Rose/Doctor relationship before being written out of the show entirely. That's it. That's Mickey's entire arc as a Companion, from beginning to end. Sure, there's parts where he returns to the narrative, at the end of both the second and fourth seasons, but that's more because he's written completely differently on his return (having gone through a ton of character development offscreen). The Mickey that we see, the first and second Series Mickey, his "arc" as Companion- it's utter dross, from beginning to end, and as I said at the beginning of this review the worst part is how marginal it ended up being. How pointless. How immaterial. This is the expectations Rory was saddled with when he was introduced, especially as the Companion's main squeeze. I'm honestly trying to think of a worse character archetype to be the successor to than Mickey's, and I'm coming up completely blank, because thinking about it boy oh boy oh boy did RTD utterly skullfuck Mickey as a character from every turn. Oxx argues that Rose is a How-To on loving up a Companion; before writing this review, I completely agreed with him. Writing this now, to me there's no argument that Mickey was the real actual biggest RTD mistake Companion-wise, because at least Rose was memorably bad. Mickey, as a Companion, was nothing. Mickey is almost inarguably the single worst Companion of the Who revival. Rory, even in two episodes, is in my opinion the greatest. Which is loving astounding, because of how similar he is to Mickey in how they're initially introduced. He's got the same relationship with Amy that Mickey did- a passive personality linked to his more dominating, aggressive significant other. He's introduced on the show in "Eleventh Hour" in a very similar function that Mickey does in "Rose"- where he's a stabilizing element that's emblematic of the life the main Companion is leaving behind. And in both cases, Mickey and Rory, they're both characters that are screwed over, constantly, by the universe they inhabit. Rory is so similar to Mickey on a surface level, but on a textural level they couldn't be more distinct. Which is why even in "Eleventh Hour" Rory stood out as one to watch- he's passive, sure, but Mickey came across, and was treated by the narrative in "Rose", as a wimp, an interpretation that was only reinforced as the first season went on. In "Eleventh Hour", Rory is passive because he's practical; he's not spineless, he's quiet. He's realized that being in a relationship with Amy is one that requires picking your battles, and he's taken that outlook and reflected it on life in general. He doesn't get upset at things unless they're worth getting upset over, he doesn't stir poo poo up just for the sake of it. He's well-adjusted, in other words, which is something so rare as to be worth specific note on Doctor Who, especially with Companions, whose entire personalities are usually defined by needing to find their place in the universe. Rory's outlook on life is one of a bemused, subtle grin. He's a man who's managed to stay afloat in a cruel and uncaring world; in contrast to Mickey, who always seemed stunned and angry whenever he was inevitably given short shrift by the universe, Rory is a man who absolutely knows that nobody owes him any favors and takes setbacks in stride, ready to continue on and do what he has to. Rory and Mickey occupy the exact same role on Doctor Who, and that's to get hosed over by the universe. The difference, and it's all the difference in the world, between them is Rory knows that. So, despite "Eleventh Hour" being a parade of awful things happening to Rory- he gets fired for being right, then some crazy spaceman whom his girlfriend wouldn't stop obsessing over (and is the cause of nearly all of her deep psychological issues, which Rory has clearly been on the receiving end of for their entire relationship) comes in and shanghais her away from him, and this is all in the middle of an episode that frequently makes Rory the butt of every joke- his attitude never changes. He realizes that things like this are just gonna happen to him, so instead of being Mickey and being whiney, or mopey, or self-pitying, he continues doing his job. He doesn't throw tantrums when Eleven insults his looks right in front of Amy, opting instead to immediately assist in the climax of "Eleventh Hour", without question. He's the quietly competent straight man around which the twin zephyrs of The Doctor and Amy whirl, and he knows it. Which is what makes him so fantastic, because Moffat's Who reinforces that narrative with the script. Mickey was hurt by his lovely, mostly non-existent characterization, but the nail in Mickey's coffin was that RTD demanded at all times that the audience treat him as a walking punchline. In contrast, Moffat and the writer for this episode, Toby Whithouse, are 100% on Rory's side here. Moffat's Who embraces Rory in a way RTD's never did Mickey; you know, for RTD, a showrunner who wanted to glorify the supreme capabilities of the mundane, the casual he sure did impress on the audience how much of a piece of poo poo Mickey was for being those two things. Looking at Rory, though, Moffat and Whithouse know that Rory is just an ordinary, no-frills individual, one who constantly, through no fault of his own, is on the short end of the stick. And so they play into and build that so when Rory gets shat on by someone or something else, it builds sympathy over antipathy. When bad stuff happens to Rory, the audience feels bad as well; in comparison, when bad stuff happened to Mickey, the audience felt nothing, or even glee, because of the way the scripts wanted him to cross across. It's also important to compare Mickey and Rory's introduction episodes. "School Reunion" was bad because Mickey barely got any screentime over Sarah Jane, Rose, or The Doctor; his decision to come aboard the TARDIS is not built on within the episode outside of one scene which is, of course, a joke at Mickey's expense. His decision to join- or, rather, to beg to join -feels completely haphazard and shoved into the script because the season arcing demanded it, not something narratively built to. Most damning of all, though, Mickey's introductory episode has him as the fifth-most important character in an episode with four main characters- Mickey gets less screentime than loving K-9. In contrast, "The Vampires of Venice" is an episode all about Rory. Oh sure, there's a plot that technically happens- Rosanna Calvierri (Helena McCrory) and her son Francesco (Alex Price) are patrons of the city of Venice, natch, in 1580, and are seemingly turning women into vampires- but actually they're turning them into fish-monsters, as Rosanna and her son are actually alien fish-people that escaped the encroaching Silence that destroyed their home planet and are attempting to turn Venice into a second home for themselves, and need women to repopulate their species. It's a rather predictable, samey plot with similar elements to what the audience has seen before, and multiple times- an alien race attempting to take over Earth (or in this case, a city) by using methods that seem quite similar to those of a traditional supernatural being. The plot, while decent enough, is mostly an excuse to introduce Rory, and Arthur Darvill by extension, to the show. From the cold open of the episode- with The Doctor popping out of the cake meant for a stripper at Rory's stag party, only to then gleefully inform Rory that Amy tried to kiss him, the episode focuses in like a laser beam on Rory, who he is, and why the audience should care about him. Which, in comparison to Mickey is exactly the way a new Companion should be illustrated in their introduction episode. Mickey was barely present in "School Reunion"- from the cold open moving forward Rory is the lynchpin of "Vampires". At every moment in this episode Rory comes off looking better and better, and he's dimensionalized in a completely different way than the Companions before him. Rory is an unassuming gentleman who's quietly competent, who doesn't make a big show about being supremely capable. Rory's moments are small, but they make huge impressions as to what his abilities are: his first moment in the TARDIS, for instance, is him cutting off Eleven when the latter is about to go off on his "bigger on the inside" spiel: "It's another dimension," Rory assumes. "After Prisoner Zero, I've been reading up on all the latest scientific theories- FTL travel, parallel universes..." In his first scene aboard the TARDIS he ends up showing up The Doctor, without even meaning to- it's not a scene that comes across as Rory gloating or trying to prove how much better than The Doctor he is- Rory is an ordinary man that, when confronted with the extraordinary, politely rises to the challenge, never changing his personality. He's a practical, logical man who when shown something that shatters his worldview entirely does what most normal people would do, and that's research it. It's good, too, that in his introduction The Doctor is firmly on Rory's side for the duration- despite his awful first impression in the cold open, Eleven's trying to prevent a relationship from going south due to his...well, his being The Doctor. The conceit of "Vampires"- why The Doctor, Rory, and Amy travel back in time to Venice in 1580 in the first place -is out of The Doctor's desire to have Rory and Amy's relationship mended, which is more effort put into Rory's character than The Doctor ever made with Mickey in his two seasons on the show. Rory may be quiet, controlled, and generally passive, but he's not a doormat. In his best scene in the episode, Rory confronts The Doctor about the way he manipulates others in a way that comes across as incisive and true- "You know what's dangerous about you?" Rory rhetorically, angrily asks. "It's not that you make people take risks. It's that you make them want to impress you. You make it so they don't want to let you down. You have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves whenyou're around." It's a powerful, incredibly resonant scene for Rory, and comes across not as Rory jealous or whiny but understandably concerned for the love of his life's well-being, which is now at risk largely because of The Doctor's devil-may-care attitude. It's not about a love triangle or hurt feelings- it's about the fact that The Doctor is at times dangerously reckless and makes others around him the same way. It's about how Rory has a base instinct to protect his fellow man- he's a nurse, after all -that is at times naturally confrontational to The Doctor's style, and he expresses that belief the only way he knows how: honestly and without making a big show of it. Rory's personality may be subdued, but he isn't a bore- even though he's, justifiably, mad at Amy for the way she hurt him he still is able to marvel at how lucky he is to be where he is- his line of "We are in Venice and it's 1580!" shows how well he's able to pivot, how he doesn't needlessly pout about things. He's able to keep the big picture in mind, constantly, without getting bogged down in his own issues. The greatest thing about Rory, and why he's such a great Companion, isn't his fantastic acting or the way he slots into the Doctor/Amy dynamic like he was always supposed to be there or his attitude or his abilities. It's that he's a dude. Rory is the most normal person, maybe in all of existence; an especially unlucky person, sure, but he's a normal guy. Doctor Who is an aspirational show, which means the characters are ones the audience aspires to being; unfortunately this means that on some level it's unachievable. The Doctor is all the greatest qualities of the human race personified, and on some level every Companion he's had has been reflective of that trend. We can all want to be Donna, but it's impossible because she's so superhuman in so many different ways. In comparison, anyone can be a Rory; as a matter of fact, every human being is Rory whenever he or she encounters a setback and powers through without complaint, or is just a decent human being because it's the right thing to do, or helps out in whatever way they can- even if that ends up being ineffectual, the point is in the trying. Rory is great because his superpower isn't that he's clever or smart or gifted or whatever, it's that he's a Decent Human Being. Everyone could use another decent human being in their lives, which is why "The Vampires of Venice" is such an incredible episode of Who- it's an episode that illustrates the advantages of mundane humanity. In a way, it's the most inspiring episode of Who yet. Grade: A Random Thoughts:
NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Jan 20, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 19:50
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just fyi this was the review i most enjoyed writing
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Jan 20, 2015 19:52
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 05:18 |
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I forgot this was the first Rory episode so this is gonna be the one that tanks my score.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:58
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