Same here, it’s part of the reason why I’ve never bothered to own a Sony or Microsoft console. Their first party titles are not radically different to anything I could play on my PC, and often I can actually play them on my PC with significantly better visuals/performance/input. Meanwhile, Nintendo is still puting out first party titles that are quite unique to their systems. It’s actually so good that they’ve become a portable-focused company now because their systems and games have become the perfect accompaniments for PC gamers.

Yeah like the closest Nintendo has got to mentioning specs is just a bigger OLED screen, which is so obvious it could barely be considered a spec drop.

Very true, though I think for many it is still a home console in their head because on the surface it appears like a direct continuation of the Wii U. It’s actually the opposite - a portable console that can optionally be used as a home console with, in some cases, improvements to the visuals when doing so. Some people still see Nintendo as being in direct competition with Sony and Microsoft when they really haven’t been for a long time now.

I would feel more confident in this film if it were animated. After decades of bad Zelda cosplay fan films, I find it very difficult to imagine a live action Zelda film not looking completely ridiculous.

You might enjoy some of Woo Min-ho’s films. ‘Drug King’ (2018) is a biopic about a Korean drug lord in the '70s, while ‘Inside Men’ (2016) is a political thriller focusing on corruption in modern Korean society (criminal organisations influencing politicans and the judicial system). I’d also recommend Na Hong-jin’s ‘The Yellow Sea’ (2010), which is about a Yanbian taxi driver who falls into the criminal underworld after racking up huge debts via his gambling addiction.

This would be amazing!

My problem isn’t that rhetoric targeting anti-Trump Americans is mean but that it’s counterproductive.

Typing this after you’ve just whined about “Europeans” is peak irony. You guys are so fucking clueless.

Many of your examples are just the US fucking up the lives of citizens in other countries. The average American at home does not give a fuck about the people being murdered by his government, he isn’t going to skip a day of work to protest against that. I think maybe you are forgetting how much Americans loved the idea of invading Iraq, for instance. It took a long time for support to decrease, and even then it was only to like 50/50 levels. Americans weren’t the ones protesting against that war, it was the rest of the world who saw it for what it was. When it comes to foreign affairs the American citizen has consistently been blinded by a mixture of patriotism, ignorance and the myth of American exceptionalism.

Why shouldn’t they be? Americans have long had a superiority complex, always confidently mocking the problems of others around the world as if they were immune to them. It may feel bad for you now but the schadenfreude the rest of the world feels is completely justified. Frankly, the way some of you are suddenly crying about the rest of the world being mean to you is only further contributing to this image of Americans thinking they are above everyone else.

This dilemma has been explored previously by Red Letter Media, but they had a whole section dedicated to it in the middle of their recent ‘Presence’ review (by Steven Soderbergh), because it was raised again recently by Sean Baker in his acceptance speech at the Oscars. I am the type of person who prefers to see films at my local cinema for both nostalgia/cultural heritage reasons and because the experience in terms of the audio and visuals is better than what I have at home, but at the same time the cinema experience is so vulnerable to disruption when it comes to these kinds of films that it always feels like I’m gambling with time and money when I decide to go.

Your initial criticism wasn’t even that it was bad, just that it was shallow, which is an objective truth. The triggered minority who identify as blue cat people don’t want to live in reality with the rest of us though, so they have to come up with these cope reasons like “you’re just a hater” or “you’re just too dumb to understand it”. Like you can enjoy the franchise and not pretend it has more depth or symbolic value than it actually does, there is nothing wrong with enjoying some light entertainment. People always have to make these things their entire personality now though, so any valid critique immediately gets twisted into a personal attack.

Each game tells you where they are in the timeline in relation to the other games

They setup the new world in preparation for the main theme, sure. At its deepest level that was always just (up until Skyward Sword when Nintendo began monetising fan-created lore) the echo of a myth throughout time and reality. The fans so desperate to make a direct linear connection between the conclusion of one game and the traditional introductory cut-scene of the next are so far down their rabbit hole they seem completely unable to accept the much more logical explanation that it’s just a convenient way for Nintendo to recycle the same basic narrative structure that has been used in almost every single game.

It’s not about whether or not they “hit” me - they are just extremely superfluous and lacking in any depth. If you like the film that’s nice, but its take on colonialism is objectively at a primary school level with its one-dimensional bad guys and noble savages.

The first one was definitely a massive cinematic event because of its visuals and the second one was also an event in itself because it was the sequel to the first film. If the third is released any time soon then I might reconsider going to see it. The gap between the first two was sort of what interested me but the second wasn’t as visually impressive for its time as the first. I would be surprised if there were many Avatar “fans”, though. It just doesn’t have anywhere near enough depth to its characters or their world and a lot of its themes about spirituality and indigeneity feel like some borderline cultural appropriation white guilt stuff. The people who are really into that aspect of the films are revealing quite a lot about themselves and their own insecurities, I think.

I think it’s probably a reflection of their age, reputation and personal wealth, as well as how much of the casual cinema audience has died out and shifted to streaming. They can make a 3+ hour epic for film enthusiasts to see in the cinema and then put it on a streaming service where everyone else can watch it in two or three sittings very easily thanks to the playback position being retained on exit.

I agree, I think the whole “official timeline” thing was 100% a fan created mythos which Nintendo saw was gaining traction and played into to make more money. It’s pretty clear that most of the games had very little connection to one another beyond the basic concept of the core theme (the hero saving the world from a great evil) repeating itself.

The Legend of Zelda: The Monkey’s Paw

GOTTEM

And I get it, the internet is fueled by clicks and engagement which are fueled by anger

You could’ve just stopped there, to be honest. The entertainment industry has always been guilty of manufacturing outrage for interaction. My unsolicited advice for everyone is to just get back to enjoying your hobbies, whether they be film, video games, music or anything else, and stop caring about the associated noise online. There is a fake controversy about everything these days and so many people seem to get emotionally manipulated into actually thinking any of it is real or relevant and end up spending more of their time absorbed in the fake drama than they do actually enjoying the original hobby.

Of the games I’ve played, I’d pick Majora’s Mask. The reduced size and linearity combines well with the time mechanic and forced repetition. I don’t agree that the BotW/TotK map was too large, though. The “emptiness” was kind of the point of those games. The space allows you to appreciate the little things like grass swaying in the wind or the distant sounds of animals.