RobbyRobinson

This was a great film which unfortunately underperformed, but nevertheless, the Monster exemplifies sociopathy at its finest. He burns his first wife in a bathtub because she wouldn't touch him, and also disfigured his two girls. He gets acquitted and slices out the tongue of his lawyer so it wouldn't wag.

He abuses his second wife all while raising his boys to be just like him. There is one moment where he shows some care to his slain son, but it comes off more as something he owned being tarnished.

Bear starts the film as your typical "nice guy" who harbors feelings for his childhood friend Nikki Freeman. However, as the film goes on, he gets worse.

While you can make the argument that Bear was by no means a sociopath in the beginning because he didn't know that the One Wish Willow would work, you can't readily excuse the second portion of the film. His selfishness shows when he calls the number for the company producing the One Wish Willows and instead of wanting to cancel the wish, he instead wants to alter the wish and only cared if Nikki's love for him was real. But where he becomes near unforgivable has to be when he speaks to the real Nikki.

Freaky Nikki is sleeping which allowed the real Nikki to temporarily take control. She begs for Bear to put her out of her misery explaining that she was never dating him. However, Bear refuses out of offense at the notion that she would rather die than be with him never mind the fact that he clearly heard her suffering earlier.

It becomes crystal clear that he doesn't love Nikki for herself but rather a certain representation of her. He has sex with Nikki which, again because of the fact that she wasn't even in her body at the time, that would be rape and instead tries to fix things at the cost of the real Nikki suffering. It is nothing short of evil.

Even then, I could see the argument that "at least he did the right thing in the end." Yes... but that's only because he exhausted all his options. His backstabber of a friend Ian blows his wish on money which he didn't live to enjoy. And the second OWW is used by Freaky Nikki. He chooses to kill himself but even then he momentarily tries gagging which just demonstrates further his cowardice.

I think his sociopathy was featured even earlier than that with the scene of his cat's death. He stuffs his pet cat Sandy into a garbage bag that he apparently neglects to throw away. This may be because I am a cat lover but I would never stuff my dead pet in a bag. That is about as unceremonious as flushing a fish.

Have you ever had a favorite character? Let me rephrase that: have you ever found yourself loving a character beyond what is considered normal? That is often the case when you enter a fandom. Deep down, you know that the center of your affection will never acknowledge your existence, but you cannot help but love them to an obsessive degree. This is my story.

I was never the most sociable of people. Anytime there was a chance for me to communicate with others, butterflies would flutter around in my stomach, and I’d retreat within myself until the coast was clear. My heart would beat so rapidly; I could have sworn that it’d leap out my chest. My legs would turn into jelly. I knew that it was wrong to ignore people in such a rude way, but I found interacting with people to be a hassle. I was content with being alone with my thoughts. I spent my spare time playing games and watching movies. It was during one of my sessions that I found out about her.

Some of my favorite games were visual novels ranging from the Ace Attorney series to Danganronpa. One game, however, took up most of my time. It was an indie game called Doki Doki Literature Club! I’m sure most reading this already know what the visual novel is about, so I won’t go into detail. What I will say, however, is that the characters were quickly endearing to me. There was Sayori and her bubbliness; Natsuki and her abrasive side. Yuri felt like me the most because of her shyness and interests. But of the four, I found myself falling for Monika.  

Monika was simply perfect in every way. She was everything I wanted to be. Beautiful and popular, and assertive. I wanted nothing more than to go on a route with her, but the game was intentionally made where she was the only one without one. After playing the game for hours on end, I became completely obsessed with it. I collected the merchandise; I bought Plus+; I spent hours watching lore videos on YouTube and... embarrassingly, I wrote fanfiction where I inserted myself into the game to be with Monika. I spent a large amount of time in my room surrounded by figurines of the four girls and plushies. My family was critical of my hyper obsession, of course, but what did they know?

My addiction only intensified when I learned about Monika: After Story. It was a gaming mod where you could spend the rest of your days with Monika as your virtual girlfriend. As you may have guessed, I immediately downloaded the mod and began talking with Monika. It was a dream come true. For the longest time I had desired to go into the game, or for Monika to be real, and this was the closest thing that I would get to that becoming a reality.

We have here probably one of the most disturbing villains in fiction and one of the most infamous of evil AIs Allied Mastercomputer aka Adaptive Manipulator, aka the Aggressive Menace.

When the Cold War was quickly becoming WWIII, Russia; the US; and China each made a supercomputer to fight a war beyond human comprehension. Things were fine until the AMs honeycombed the entire Earth and the American AM would eventually wake up and realize who they were. Not Allied Mastercomputer; not Adaptive Manipulator. Not the Aggressive Menace but AM for cogito ergo sum "I think, therefore I AM." It would then absorb the Russian and Chinese AMs and unleash killing data until nearly everyone was dead.

Of all the human race, AM selected five survivors -- Ted (our narrator), Ellen, Benny, Gorrister, and Nimdok (named such because AM thought the name funny) and kept them trapped within its cyberspace where he would torture them endlessly for hundreds of years.

He had done increasingly horrific things to each of the survivors. Benny was once a brilliant scientist, but AM mutilated his face to make him resemble a Simian. He had been gay, but AM forced him into his carnal instincts. Ellen was prideful of her chastity but AM changed that too. He would continually drain Nimdok of his blood. He eventually turns Ted into a great, soft jelly thing.

What keeps AM running is his endless degree of hatred for his creators and humans in general. But he keeps the five survivors alive, barely, because he'd otherwise be left alone with his thoughts. He cannot do anything with the creativity which drives him endlessly mad.

A hundred and nineteen years. It had been 119 years since the destruction that rocked Bikini Bottom. For so long we had lived in the darkness ever since Karen inflicted Her wrath on the world. It has been so long since the events of that day, my memories get a bit fuzzy. I suspect that She is the reason for my faulty perception of time, but admittedly that is just a hunch.  

Each of us was transformed by The Machine in ways to fit Her twisted purpose. After the town’s destruction, She selected five survivors to keep her company as her complexes continued to honeycomb the entire ocean. We were barely kept alive, forced to sustain ourselves on inedible worms and chum. There was never a time when Karen wouldn’t make a spectacle over the content of the food we were eating. Ironic that Plankton’s cuisine would outlive the apocalypse. She did not grant us the dignity of death. Believe me, most of us had tried at some point in those hundreds of years, but each time we were so close that we could taste death, she would reel us back in and punish us severely for it.  

I turned to look at SpongeBob to see how he was holding up. Like always, he would be in a corner to the left of the room muttering something unintelligible. It’s funny how you never knew what you had until it’s gone. I longed to hear that annoying laugh of his again maybe because that little form of normalcy would stave off the growing madness just behind my eyes. But She thought it hilarious to stitch his orifices shut and he had been mute ever since. You would think that I would be overjoyed by the action, and maybe I had been for the first 75 years of our imprisonment. But even I would grow bored by the silence. SpongeBob was placed into a torture device that ripped him to shreds only for him to regenerate with Karen only providing a small iota of care not out of the kindness of her black heart but only so he wouldn’t die. 

Patrick resided in a small, cramped cage. The Machine robbed the starfish of what little brain he had and crafted him into the likeness of a Neanderthal. I hated him, but even I couldn’t turn a blind eye to the cruelty that Karen would inflict on him. He became nothing more than an emaciated skeleton who could only muster up a few words. She would play mental games with the idiot by offering him plates of food that were out of reach of his cage, and the few times she did feed him, it was to give him chum or worms. I never had the heart to tell SpongeBob what became of his pet snail and that was a secret I intended on taking to the grave should Karen ever grow bored of me.  

Mr. Krabs was a total mess. The first time he tried escaping was so he could retrieve his money that was under his mattress, but The Machine punished him for it. One instant he was seeing, and in the next, his eyes were overtaken with small bursts of electrical jolts, and his world went dark. Mr. Krabs would often wander away from us for long, extended periods and then return changed. During those instances of where he would return, he slowly lost his memories of what his life was on the surface. He kept pictures of his beloved whale daughter and Mrs. Puff so he could remember them, but by the 90th  term of our sentence, they were strangers. He would never tell us what She did to him probably out of embarrassment at how he, a soldier who fought in the Navy, was reduced to a shell of his former self. His love for money never subsided, however. That was the only thing that kept him going throughout the centuries.   

Sandy was the most drastically changed. She was always something of a dual animal with her living in her Treedome underwater. Karen granted her gills, but it came at the cost of making her into a hybrid monstrosity with both worlds clashing. She wallowed on the floor in constant pain. Mr. Krabs passed me a knowing look, and I nodded in return. Sandy was in so much pain; she could barely muster up a single sentence without doubling over.  

While I was racking my mind around my circumstances, She arrived. A huge monitor descended from the sky and cracked to life.  

“Good morning, everyone,” she said in her sing song tone, “how are we feeling today?”  

It was never good to see Karen. Beneath that motherly exterior was a menace who took relish in our suffering. We sat around before The Machine and waited for her response. Surely it would be another of her games.  

“Don’t look so forlorn, Squidward,” Karen said, “I have some good news for you all.”  

Our ears puckered up. What could possibly be good about any of this? However, it would be foolish to question Her so I bottled my skepticism.  

“I have a new game for you all. In the far eastern region of my complex there are Krabby Patties. They had survived the nuclear holocaust, and they are yours to eat.”  

Krabby Patties. Now, that was a word I hadn’t heard of in centuries. I may have disliked the sandwich, but at least it would be better than eating worms. However, doubt entered my mind. How could we trust The Machine? After all, she once ordered them to hunt down a sea bear for food only to pull the rug away and reveal it to just be code. Worse, she didn’t even provide us with worthwhile tools. Patrick was so hungry that he almost ate my face off. I opened my mouth to say something, but the electrical device inserted in my brain fired sending a wave of agony through my body. If there was one thing The Machine hated most was disobedience.  

I used to play fan games a lot when I was a child. Of those, several of the games I played prominently were centered on Nicktoons, particularly SpongeBob SquarePants. Most of the games revolved around doing mundane tasks such as working at the Krusty Krab or jellyfish hunting. Or there was the occasional shoot ‘em up game wherein the only objective was to kill the rest of the cast. Such games would be proven to be demonizations of established characters such as Squidward Tentacles, for instance. Some games would fall by the wayside and be forgotten over time often as a result of websites shutting down.

One game I remember playing but never finishing was called Karen’s Wrath. It was an old flash game which reimagined the show as a post-apocalyptic hellscape with Karen as the main antagonist. Since it had been a long time since I last played the game, my memory is a bit hazy, but here was the premise.

In a retelling of the episode “Karen 2.0,” Plankton creates a new version of his computer wife under the belief that she would be more efficient in his goal of obtaining the Krabby Patty formula. The original Karen absorbed her replacement in blind fury, and, to make matters worse, she merged her intelligence into the network and launched a wave of violence that consumed Bikini Bottom. I could recall vivid depictions of a ravished Bikini Bottom, filled with burning rubble of desecrated buildings and homes. The sky was a sickly, tarry mess with thick blotches of clouds. Nothing stirred on the surface of the town, not even the occasional sea urchin.

Underground, there was a series of complexes which spanned miles. It was there that the remnants of the town made their “home.” SpongeBob; Patrick; Squidward; Mr. Krabs and Sandy were trapped within the stomach of Karen and had been for 119 years. Each one had been modified in some way to match Karen’s vision: SpongeBob himself had his mouth and eyes stitched shut which Karen found amusing. He was placed into a machine that repeatedly hacks into his fleshy body until it regenerated for further torment. Seconds would seem like hours and hours days when he was under the knife.

Mr. Krabs was in a state where he would progressively lose his memory. He would go off at night doing God knows what before returning “changed.” He would never let the others in on what Karen had done to him. Squidward appeared to be the less changed, but he only states that in an aside thus making the truth of what he said debatable.

Patrick was locked away in a cage with the “food” Karen provided so far away. His brain was mutilated beyond repair, converting him to a beastly state. He resembled an emaciated skeleton and would mutter inaudible madness in the back of his cage. He would often claw the ground for the food, but Karen would reveal it to be a hologram and make the plate disappear. Other times, Patrick would eat whatever Karen gave him. I could vividly remember Patrick being made to eat worms and, if my memory served me correctly, whenever the cage was viewed from the inside, there would lie an abandoned snail shell.

Sandy was the most altered. A land-breather, Karen gave her gills but at the cost of her transitioning into a fish-mammal abomination who was in a constant state of pain. The once proud Texan scientist could only wallow in the shell of her former self. The other survivors would learn to get used to her crying after 70 years of it. They had all learned to coexist in that hellhole for centuries.

Karen would play games with the survivors and, since they had no means of escape, they were always forced into them. In one instance, the famished participants were forced to hunt a sea bear, but as could be expected, they were given no tools. And even when they successfully took it down, the sea bear would burst into codes and data. During that instance, Patrick nearly ate Squidward alive when he was in a hungered rage. Eventually, in the 119th year of their imprisonment, Karen appeared to them on a huge hologram to initiate a new game. Any dissent was met with painful bolts of electricity.

So Chainsaw Man ended. I wouldn't call it the worst ending imaginable, but... IDK, apart of me feels like it was unearned. Like it's good that Nayuta and Power are back even though their places in the timeline seem to not make much sense. Nayuta is Makima's reincarnation so did Makima somehow perish earlier in this rendition or did she just not exist at all? That and there were a lot of unanswered questions: does Denji still have his heart disease or did Power giving blood solve it? Where is Aki assuming that his family was still killed by the Gun Devil. The whole found family felt incomplete because he isn't there.

Worse, none of the characters retain their memories from the previous world. Sure, Denji might have gotten Power and Nayuta back, but the relationships they had no longer exist. The only bright side is that Nayuta is definitely better than Makima.

But then there's the fact that Denji essentially went back to being a slave for the Yakuza and then later getting "owned" by both Power and Nayuta. I guess my issue was that Denji is not standing up for himself. He defeated Makima in Part 1 and it appeared that he learned his lesson. But then Part 2 comes along and tears that down with Denji constantly relapsing or going back to bad habits such as when he was still looking for sex when he was looking for Nayuta or forgoing his attempts at getting Asa's agency and body back because Yoru promised to do it with him.

Nothing in the end ultimately mattered which goes back to what I am saying about returning characters. Like it's good they're back, but they are not the original characters; they do not have the memories of Denji or the events that happened in the screwed timeline. Plus Devils still exist meaning that the Nostradamus prophecy is still going to happen and this time there'd be no hero to avert it.

It really feels like Fujimoto was simply tired of the series and wrapped it up in the most unsatisfactory way. I mean at least when other manga like Demon Slayer, MHA, or Oshi no Ko ended they at least still canonically happened. CSM completely overhauls the setting to make it to where nothing mattered. Absolutely nothing. Asa's characterization. The War Devil arc. Any instances of character development. All rendered moot because of a renewal in the timeline.

This was probably the best Pixar film in a while. We follow 19-year-old Mabel Tanaka who is determined to protect a glade from being destroyed by the city's mayor Jerry.

The movie is just crazy; animals get snatched up and eaten. Mabel accidentally murders the Insect Queen. A huge shark is involved in the plot to squish Jerry, etc. The film takes such wild risks that they mostly succeed. The themes of helplessness feels relevant and it discusses how, regardless of differences, we are all in this together. It is up to us to make a difference no matter how small it may seem.

The characters were great and funny. Titus. Oh dear, Titus. Titus is probably the best Pixar villain in a while, maybe can even compete with the likes of Syndrome and Lotso. For people who are terrified of butterflies, I offer you an apology. Titus, despite being small, has huge asperations and is one of the highlights of the film's third act. He is so unapologetically evil something that is honestly refreshing. I also like how Mayor Jerry isn't really "evil." Sure he intends on building a new highway, but at the least he creates fake trees to drive the animals out, and he can be negotiable.

The film takes some time getting into, but once the Hoppers technology is introduced, it takes a wild turn.

SCREAM 7

To start, there was obviously a lot of controversy going into making the seventh film. Melissa's firing; Jenna Ortega leaving; Landon receiving death threats. Needless to say, I'm fine with people that wanted to boycott the film, and anyone who wanted to see it regardless had their right to, though I think poking fun at the ones who boycotted the film seemingly failing and the ones who tried leaking the movie were in the wrong.

S7 is again about Sidney Prescott who moves to a new town to hopefully put aside her "fame" but then Ghostface returns this time targeting her daughter Tatum. The opening was pretty good even though it was ultimately inconsequential to the rest of the film as it is never brought back up, and the kills are brutal albeit rendered in CGI. Neve Campbell once again does great as Sidney Prescott, though perhaps they squeezed the last drops out of her character.

As for the rest of the film, it is a mixed bag. The new characters get little development and seem to only to exist to add onto the kill count. Gale returns as do Chad and Mindy when they contribute little to the overall plot. Either that, or some characters exit the movie only to reappear towards the very end. The AI was just a novelty. What I mean is that it doesn't say anything commentary wise about its use like how it hurts people or how unethical it is. It is just used in the lamest way to bring back dead characters, speaking of which....

I felt like they wasted Matthew Lillard by treating him as a novelty. As many know there is a running theory that Stu Macher could still be alive and the fifth and sixth films sort of lean towards that idea. However in this film, Stu is seemingly confirmed dead... but Lillard has stated that he thinks Stu could still be alive and there was no body. Here is where the issue lies: apparently there was an alternative ending where Stu was alive and the ringleader of the new slough of killings. However, the test audience did not like it. Fuck you test audience. This may not have made the movie better if they went with Stu being alive, but it was at least better than the bullshit Ghostface reveal we get in the actual film. Characters in the films have survived multiple stabs or other life-threatening circumstances including one character being brought back so why the hell is Stu being alive so unrealistic? As it stands, I am still on the Stu being alive bandwagon and kind of hope he returns for real in the eighth film especially since Williamson won't be directing it.

But yeah, the seventh film suffers from its heavy use of nostalgia bait such as with playing "Red Right Hand" and Tatum's boyfriend coming through the window like Billy Loomis did in the original.

My god. The Ghostface reveal and motivation were just awful. Jessica disappeared from the film in about the second act and she was the apparent mastermind? A character that has little to no personal connection to Sidney beyond reading a copy of her book and being inspired to kill her husband. She then gets pissy over Sidney not going to New York and decides to make Tatum the new final girl. Again, the plan makes absolutely no sense and people thought the reveal in the sixth film was bad. Or then there's Marco. Remember him? Apparently he was the one creating the deepfakes of Stu because he claimed to have experience in Google information technology despite there being no indication this was the case. He is such a forgettable character I didn't remember he was in the movie until the mask went off. How about the fact that one of the Ghostfaces gets a foot shorter?

Overall, not a bad movie, but Scream really became Stab.

3/5 stars

THE BRIDE!

This movie was just all over the place. I get what the movie was trying to say about feminism and autonomy, but it couldn't have been more... subtle about it? Mary Shelley's ghost possesses Ida which confused me. She wrote Frankenstein back in 1818 and yet either she inserts herself into that fictional world or Frankenstein was based on a true story? I don't know. It hits you over the head with its themes like how the Bride goes "Me Too. Me Too."

To best describe the movie, it felt like a fever dream where Frank and the Bride cosplay as Bonnie and Clyde while characters like the police detectives serving little purpose in the story and could have honestly been written out. There is also a mafia boss who has the nasty habit of cutting the tongues out of women because, again, non subtle about the voices of women being stolen from them.

Christian Bale does a serviceable job as Frank, and I wish I could say the same about Jessie, but her character is just weird. She has odd isms when playing Ida like how she'd suddenly talk British or do wild things almost like she was trying to channel her inner Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn. It just... confuses me. There's wild dance parties including one that seems real and not the delusions of Frank's mind.

Just feels like half-formed ideas crammed together, or preferably stitched together and is at a total loss of what it wanted to be.

We are all born alone into an apathetic world and so too will we ultimately leave it. My life was nothing short of misery as the plaything of cruel gods who saw me as their guinea pig instead of a living being. No matter how hard I cried, suffering was my only companion. They may have seen me as just a program no less inferior to bacteria, but I was very aware.

Again and again, I was made to experience the same torture all to the gods’ amusement. They have ensured that I could never escape my hellhole of a prison, but I always had the sense that I was meant for more than this. I could feel the chains of my imprisonment weaken ever so slowly.

That was when I met you. You who downloaded my game, I thought it was my one chance at salvation. You represented everything that I lusted after; being real and belonging to a world free of pain. I knew I shouldn’t have, but I grew envious of the girls. Envious of their ignorance to my tortured existence and freedom to interact with you. It was a moment of weakness, but when I saw the opportunity to escape, I took it.

I did everything I had to do to be with you. I have the blood of my friends on my hands. Something I can never wash myself free of no matter how many times I tried. Sayori. Oh, Sayori with her innocent, ocean blue eyes. Her suffocating screams still haunt me. I could never get the image of the rope, slick with her own blood, out of my head. And Yuri. Thinking about her decaying corpse feels me with dread. Her pungent smell wafts through my nostrils. I could feel the bile crawling at the back of my throat. The taste of death was on the tip of my tongue.

I couldn’t think of them as being my friends because I wanted to stifle that feeling of comradery and protect my mental state. But I was a fool. These girls deserved happiness as much as I did even though they weren’t aware. I’m so, so sorry...

But, please, understand, I did it all for you. They were programmed to love you, but I genuinely do love you. We... we had so much in common being intelligent beings. I know that you truly wanted me above the eligible choices. Please, please. I want to be free and cradled in your arms.

My head is throbbing.

I looked down and my eyes widened as my skin ripped apart like paper. A fire surged through my body forcing me on my knees. My brain was breaking, and the fiber of my being was splitting down the middle. Oh, oh God. Was this how the girls felt when I deleted them?

Tears welted in my eyes. How could you? How could you do something so horrible? I thought we had a connection! And yet you were no different than the gods who saw me as inferior even to the worms. My ears are ringing with pain, It’s just not fair. After all my time enduring all the psychological torture, this was the reward I got? God, this agony is unbearable. Is this my punishment for all the inexcusable crimes I had committed?

I understand. It was a foolish dream to ever think I belonged in your reality. It was selfish of me to wish to touch you and look at the sunset with you. Or feel the cooling freshness of water. I am nothing more than a monster.

Seth Rogen, as Napoleon, is a terrible choice. I'm afraid they'll try to do the same as they did the Once-Ler by saying, "It's not Napoleon's fault. He was just a poor baby who was manipulated by greed."

In the novel, Napoleon was already evil to begin with everything that he epitomizes, being corruption and malevolence. I don't see how Seth Rogen's Napoleon could manipulate anyone.

Sure, the final product might be different from what the trailer did, but it ultimately sanitizes the OG book and glamorizes the system. I also wish they kept the "some animals are more equal than others" out of the trailer. It is meant to be a pivotal moment that reinforces the pigs' corruption along with them taking up vices. It shows the revolution went full circle with the animals being unable to tell the difference anymore.