Just the fact that even PR people try to breakdown costs by extremely over-inflating costs and they still come up short! And that's not even including the fact that the hotel itself is not as good as the most premium Disney Resorts, but this one is more expensive?
Season 3 made season 4 harder to watch. Season 4 was better than 3 but it also felt kind of... I'm not quite sure the right word. Diluted? Or maybe the other direction as a Flanderization?
Most of my issues were the pacing and the attempt at making the show feel heavy, but it ended up not quite hitting the marks for me.
I wonder if there is a meaningful difference between your example, and the technology with which the JWST uses to view light in the past. Rather, if the later is something we can use for time travel ;)
I gave it a read and there's some interested takes but overall disagree and I think this particular read may miss some of the best parts of what make Blade Runner work. To just respond to the surmise, since all 10 points to me are more like 7 and even those 7 kind of just come down to these 3, lol.
First and foremost, its pacing is fine. Bad pacing in a movie is far worse, like Anna, and even pacing in a good one like Dune, doesn't mean anything necessarily - Blade Runner does a fine job if you are able to pay attention, I guess. Personally it seems a little odd to blame being molded by contemporary media to be the reason why an older film no longer holds up. Let me put it this way though - We have Drive (2011) and Baby Driver (2017). In a lot of ways, these movies are exactly the same at times being almost shot for shot early on (likely homage). But Baby Driver is an extremely fast paced movie, and Drive is an extremely slow burn. Both of these movies, like Blade Runner, do something different, so of the critiques there can be I'm not fully on board with this one, unless the argument is that old movies should be able to take any viewer out of their subjectivity mold, I can't really agree with the takeaway from this. I had a harder time watching the new Dune than I did Blade Runner, does that make Dune's pacing worse than Blade Runner or is Blade Runner's pacing better than Dune? See what I mean? I might feel different had there been any examples, but it seemed that it just found a "Blade Crawler" comment and made a point about it, and now that's bad because... movies are faster paced? Nyeh, not sold, lol.
Decker is no more than an analogue for the viewers to be in the world, he may be the protagonist but Decker, IMO, is far from the main character. I also disagree about him lacking complexity, however I would say that it is indeed because he is 100% a foil to the antagonists. Decker isn't meant to be this incredible Blade Runner that no other can live up to - he's good sure, he's alive and has his faculties and limbs, but he quite literally takes the role of the futuristic Desk Jockey, he is just the pencil pusher that grinds up the replicants. More on this later.
Whenever I watch Blade Runner I'm always surprised by how it's such a quiet film with so much exposition in just a few sentences. I don't think anything overshadows anything else. I think there is a strong emphasis on atmosphere which helps with the world building we get from the characters and interactions. It critiques hyper-capitalism by showing a world far in the future that by all accounts is exactly the same, save a few office jobs that have evolved. The underground is still working girls and chefs and the government is still uncoordinated and corrupt. Without the focus on visuals to evoke just how different this world is supposed to be, we don't get snapped back into mundanity when we see Decker ordering food and getting stopped by other officers. Moreover, the depth of the story comes specifically from Roy Batty, who as I mention should be viewed as the real protagonist. I think the movie itself argues this point to the bone, but everyone only ever seems to want to talk about Decker so maybe not.
I find it hard to see a lack of depth when Roy and Pris, literal cybernetic robots, are the most emotive characters in Blade Runner. The only other character we genuinely see some emotion from is the Tinkerer J.F. Sebastian, who has a love for his toys and makes friends with the replicants. They get inhumanly emotive at times, but they more than anyone we see express just how much they want to live. Roy's entire journey is a process of becoming human, until death when he gives birth to Decker by saving him. Roy lived as a human would have. In life, Roy was enslaved, escaped, and lived on the lamb. He sought vengeance towards God (Tyrell), found love, exacts vengeance once more before, in my opinion, realizing and accepting that God was right. There is no extending life. Not his own.
As he sees Deckard about to die, with the understanding that Roy himself will soon as well, Roy saves Deckard not as an act of mercy but as a birth. To extend life. For me, the story isn’t much about Deckard. It’s about what Deckard’s piece represents for humanity. He isn't complex, he doesn't need to be. Not everyone is. Particularly when Deckard himself isn't even the point that the film was trying to make, each and every quintessential moment of philosophy comes from the antagonists musings, not the protagonists inquisitions.
Your final act in death is to give life which you were no longer allowed.
Jack Black rarely really plays himself in voice acted roles. He really embodies Bowser in the Mario Movie, and even Kung Fu Panda he isn't really himself, so I'm not really worried for Claptrap.
As for the other examples, I don't think actors have to be young or yolked to play a character. Not that I see Hart as Roland, just that I don't think his size matters for this at all.
But yeah the movie could really go either way, there's a lot of potential but Borderlands could very easily be a franchised series so I do wonder about the casting from a different perspective.
Some of them seem pretty bad. I feel like the example image with the eyes and the teeth is quite a damning stylistic choice, compared to some of their other monsters which look more like a palette swap and animal change with some model variations. Save for the few that straight up have the same attack, like the Deciduueye example, I think it's reasonable enough to use them for inspiration, although not necessarily the best option. It's a shame they felt the need to rely on something that is popular I think it hurt them a bit by not having as uniform a vision.
That said, even if I do think it's pretty obvious I don't want them to lose this if anything comes of it, Pokemon is just as bad and they have nothing to gain from ruining this persons work other than asserting dominance.
I do hope they use this as a learning opportunity for next time and maybe stop being so goddamn blatant in their "homage". I would have been much more inclined to the game if it felt like the monsters had some rationale behind them because the game is pretty solid overall. All I can say is that I hope the game continues to exist but maybe gets a more original in-world bestiary and not Pokemon Gen 15
To add to this, DD1 has quite a number of NPC's that travel between regions and you can come across them. As you progress through the game their patterns and locations change.
I actually am ambivalent on the latter mechanic as it really makes it a pain sometimes, but it still has lots of ways that it can work well.
Funny, I just found their reddit account a day or two ago by accident while looking up something tech related. Made me wonder how much of it was due to my search and how much of it due to the importance of his account due to the IAmA.
That's why they decided to kill it, but people who were interested in it had some reason for hope.
On the PS3 it was basically a team death match with the mechanics of the game. That's all it needed to be and it was fun.
Now people get angry if the game doesn't have support with content updates for at least 3 years and if it's not monetized then there's no point for the publisher to do it (and the inclusion of it angers the players). It's rough.
However in the case of the PC version, I think it's for the best. If Sony wanted it to be profitable beyond the games price point, that means mtx. If there is development happening on mtx then it's budget not going into the development of the game, which considering the state of the game that did get released... Well...
I would disagree with your 50 hour Starfield assessment, only on the basis of Todd Howards own comment that the game was made to be played for a long time.
50 hours for a game meant to be played for a long time just isn't very long at all. Heck, I enjoyed my time in Starfield and I had more than 50 hours. However I could not continue with NG+, it was just godawful.
For a game meant to be played extensively it failed in most regards.
The main thing I'm confused about is why they didn't include some of what they'd worked on for Payday 2. Like, it has a genuinely decent VR but it's just not present (I guess they've "hinted" at it).