[Weekly Update] November 15th, 2020

Christmas music is playing already. We are entering the holiday seasons. It's time to unwind and relax. Except me... You'll know what I mean.

ABOUT THE CHANNEL

• So I know I said there'll only be one video this month... I lied. In the words of a friend of mine, "resting makes me stressed", so yeah, I decided to make a short quick video anyway. It's not gonna be as long and in-depth as the usual video. But I think you'll enjoy the more relax tone, too.
• Afterward, we have a video collar series for November, and a Christmas video, nothing has changed yet.
• I'll take the final week of December off, and we'll return January with two more videos: one big retrospective of an anime artist; And the other will be about one of the worse Chinese animation ever made...
• We also have a Valentine's Month planned, with two romance movie from Hong Kong and Taiwan that will filled you with warmth!

ABOUT MEDIA

• 2020 is such a bad year, I barely watched any movies this year. It's only just recently that I finally decided to watch The New Mutant.
• I was expected to either be frustrated or laugh at how bad it is. Turns out, I kinda enjoy it... for the first half, anyway.
• Don't get me wrong, this movie looks bad and cheap. But it's consistently bad and cheap, in a sort of indie way. After a while, it starts to get endearing.
• The story is about a group of young mutants who all experienced some traumatic events. They all wake up inside a hospital sort of facility, where they are trapped and being "treated".
• It's a slow burn sort of horror, where you and the characters try to figured out multiple mysterious: What happened to each of them; what are their powers; what is this place; why they are trapped there. The build up is slow but effective. The characters are interesting, though not particularly deep. Their chemistry is charming.
• Each character starts off suspicious and unlikeable. But over the course of the film, you begin to understand why they act the way they do. There are some pretty serious topic being discussed, from prejudice within religion, to maybe the worst kind of childhood trauma you can imagine.
• It's one aspect I have to praise. The teenagers feel like teenagers, with real and serious problems. The film didn't look down on them.
• Sadly, this sort of slow burn horror needs a big reveal at the end. And for this film, the reveal is really not that big, and it's about as predictable as you can get. The film drops really obvious hints. On paper, it's there to make you think there's something wrong with this place. In practice, it just flat-out lets you know what the answers of each mystery is.
• The biggest problem, is the climax though. What started as an adult, serious horror film suddenly turns into an action filled R.L. Stine style teen horror. The tonal shift is extremely jarring. I would not be surprised if this climax has been reworked multiple times, because someone in Fox said the film needed more action.
• And no, I would've prefer if this film have no actions.
• Still, New Mutant left a good enough impression in my mind, that I can't help but wonder, what if X-Men had a bit more time to do the experimental thing. Like Logan, every X-Men story can be a "what if" story, with different genre, different theme, different style.
• It's not an unprecedented approach. The Godzilla series, for a long time, has been doing this. They all follow a loose "Godzilla mythos" and then build on that. Same with the Universal horror films. Each Frankenstein film follows a basic mythos of "Frankenstein created a creature, and cause the destruction of both". And then, each film just kinda does its own thing.
• If X-Men does that, it could've bring new life to a genre that is getting stale. Heck, it may actually get Scorsese interested.
• Too bad.

And that's the update. How is everyone's November going? Mine is pretty slow but I can kinda feel my stress going away, bit by bit.

Anyway, I'll see you in the surprised video in a few days!