Ranking Every Spider-Man Film
Pop Cultural Studies
by Andrew Rainaldi
2y ago
Spider-Man: No Way Home seems to be an interesting product of almost twenty years of Spider-Man movies. That makes this the perfect moment to check back on the previous eight Spider-Man movies with the goal of coming to a consensus: which is the best? 8. Amazing Spider-Man 2 I struggle to articulate what I don’t enjoy about this movie because I have always lacked interest in it to the point where I can’t even be bothered to hate it. Andrew Garfield isn’t a great Spider-Man or a great Peter Parker; this particular movie perpetually just has too much on its plate to really enjoy any of it. What ..read more
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Let the Wheel of Time Covers Be Weird Again
Pop Cultural Studies
by Andrew Rainaldi
2y ago
Next week, Amazon Prime will be launching its adaptation of The Wheel of Time series. This is one of the logical successors to Game of Thrones; So, over the course of the past few years, I’ve been reading Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. At the rate of one book per year, I’ve read the first three books in the series. I wanted to read at least one more, before Amazon Prime launched the first season of its adaptation of the series. But, when I went to purchase the fourth book, The Shadow Rising, I was greeted with new covers. Here are the covers for the first three books that I had: One th ..read more
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The Hero’s Journey of Squid Game
Pop Cultural Studies
by Andrew Rainaldi
2y ago
*THIS POST HAS SPOILERS FOR SQUID GAME* I have read a handful of comments online vaguely complaining that the ending of Squid Game. The ones that have gone into more detail complain about the last scene in which Seung Gi-Hun decides not to board a plane to visit his daughter in America, instead deciding to go back and confront the system which upholds the Game. At first, I had just taken these objections to the ending as a bit of a parasocial reaction to the events of the series. They’ve come to like Gi-Hun, thinking of him like a friend; they want what’s best for him. After all the suffering ..read more
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Ranking the Episodes of Over the Garden Wall
Pop Cultural Studies
by Andrew Rainaldi
2y ago
Over the Garden Wall, for everyone who has not yet watched it, is an undiscovered gem. This 10-episode miniseries ran on Cartoon Network in 2014, and tells the story of two brothers wandering through a deep and dark forest called The Unknown, and all of the whimsical, creepy, and odd encounters they have along the way. The series has developed a cult following, has become annual viewing material for many around the autumn season. Personally, I’ve started pairing this with my other favorite Autumn watch: What We Do in the Shadows. Usually, around this time of year, I write a post about that mov ..read more
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Remedial Chaos Theory, 10 years later
Pop Cultural Studies
by Andrew Rainaldi
2y ago
Last year, I started a series where I had planned to review every episode of Community, as I had done with Game of Thrones. Surely, it would be easy, since the episodes were shorter, and I wouldn’t have to have a long review for all episodes. That series didn’t continue beyond the first 10 reviews, mostly due to 2020-related burnout, but there are still quite a few episodes that I wanted to take another look at. First among them, one of the show’s best episodes, Season 3’s fourth* episode “Remedial Chaos Theory,” which this month is celebrating its 10th anniversary. And I wanted to take a look ..read more
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Grading the casting of the Upcoming Super Mario Bros. Movie
Pop Cultural Studies
by Andrew Rainaldi
2y ago
Over the past week, the internet was ablaze with mockery and outrage at the casting of the Super Mario Bros. And that outrage is fair, because every casting choice was ridiculous. But also, it was a touch unfair, because the studio behind it was Illumination, and if you had any expectations for this movie that was coming from the same movie studio which gave us the Minions, then perhaps you need to factor that in next time. The cast for [untitled Mario film] was unveiled during a Nintendo direct this past weekend, and it while it was mocked and despised, I don’t think it’s quite all bad, and I ..read more
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The Suicide Squad and Antagonistic Banter
Pop Cultural Studies
by Andrew Rainaldi
2y ago
***This post will have spoilers for The Suicide Squad and the first season of Game of Thrones*** After watching James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, I found myself coming to realize that there’s a certain action-adventure trope I love, that I thought this movie did both very well, and could have done better. I suppose there must be some name for this on TV Tropes or somewhere, but I couldn’t think of it specifically. I love when two characters have an antagonistic relationship that involves them sparring verbally, and ultimately leads to a physical confrontation. The verbal sparring may say somethi ..read more
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Pirates of the Caribbean 4: Is the most most expensive movie ever made even any good?
Pop Cultural Studies
by Andrew Rainaldi
2y ago
My post last week was about Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and even though you might not think about it, On Stranger Tides – even a decade after its release – remains the most expensive movie ever made. Compared to the first three films in the franchise, On Stranger Tides is considerably less memorable and less popular among fans. In that post, I speculated about what the cause of such a high budget could be, and essentially boiled it down to three things: 1. Johnny Depp costs a lot of money 2. Filming on the water can drive up production costs 3. CGI was handled by a wide variet ..read more
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The Most Expensive Movie Ever Made
Pop Cultural Studies
by Andrew Rainaldi
2y ago
This week, I found myself thinking, as I often do, of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. The tweet which made me think of it was a picture of Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest which said “Still can’t believe this was CGI work from 2006.” And that’s true, the CGI from the first Pirates movie was good for 2003, and has aged rather well, and the CGI for the second and third movie, as that Twitter user notes, looks as good as anything coming out fourteen and fifteen years later. And the first three movies are well-remembered and well-liked by fans. But you hear le ..read more
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Thank you, Pokemon Go
Pop Cultural Studies
by Andrew Rainaldi
2y ago
So, today is the 5th anniversary of Pokemon Go. I wrote a similar post on the game’s 3rd anniversary, explaining that although it didn’t have the same broad base of players that it had in the Summer of 2016, what it has now is a loyal and enthusiastic fanbase that loves the game. It also has 6 generations of Pokemon, with 5 additional generations being introduced in the years following the game’s release. The thing that has changed most since PoGo’s 3rd anniversary is what they’ve done in regards to the pandemic; there are daily bonus gifts, remote battles, higher spawn rates, and higher dista ..read more
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