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My 100 Worst Movies of All-Time (100-51)

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Rounding out this new series of favourite and least favourite media, we have my list of the one hundred worst movies of all-time. Films here have earned their placement based on how badly-made they are, if I’d ever want to watch it again, and how much I personally despise the film in question. There are actually quite a few movies on here that I think are extremely entertaining, and I will mention this when it’s relevant, but I have put more weight on their general quality than how enjoyable they are. And, again, these are all very subjective opinions and can only really be based on the movies I personally have seen. Got it? Let’s get into it.

100. Big, Bad Wolf (2006)

Werewolves are my favourite movie monsters, so I will admit that some of my distaste for this film stems from how they handled the central monster. There are two really big negatives here. First of all, the werewolf talks a lot. He is a joker who gives Freddy Krueger a run for his money in terms of all the bad jokes he spouts. Secondly, this werewolf likes to rape women. This film’s pretty notorious for being the one where the werewolf rapes people, and you know that they lean into the exploitation aspect of that. There are a couple pretty prominent scenes of rape and sexual assault, which just makes the film all that more unpleasant to watch, especially when it’s also trying to be comedic.

99. Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

I don’t think there’s ever been a movie I watched more out of obligation than The Rise of Skywalker. By the time it released, I was already sick of Star Wars due to the fanboy discourse around The Last Jedi. Then, when I found out that The Rise of Skywalker was undoing all the “unpopular” elements of The Last Jedi, it made me even more hostile going in. The main thing that I liked about The Last Jedi was that it was setting up a future for Star Wars to tell new stories, instead of just rehashing the greatest hits, so it seemed like The Rise of Skywalker was just going to be more half-assed original trilogy homages. I walked into that theater, but I didn’t do so with any excitement – it was Star Wars, so I had to see it. I could have been watching Knives Out, Jumanji, or goddamn Cats instead!

While this obviously coloured my opinion on the film, there were plenty of other things that really fell flat: an insultingly-dumb narrative, breaking the rules of the Star Wars universe constantly, twists that feel completely unearned, emotionally manipulative attempts to tug at your nostalgia strings… the list goes on.

This movie just makes me feel empty. It’s by far the worst Star Wars movie ever made. I don’t even consider it canon, I’ve basically deleted it from my mind, to the point where I get genuinely surprised when I’m reminded of its existence.

98. The Babysitter: Killer Queen (2020)

I had extremely low expectations for the original Babysitter film, but the premise sounded funny enough that I gave it a shot. I was actually pleasantly surprised by how fun it was, largely thanks to the fantastic lead performance by Samara Weaving. When I found out that they were going to make a sequel without her, I was hesitant, but figured I’d give it a shot again. Unfortunately, Killer Queen is a half-baked, self-referencing rehash of the original. I’ll give Emily Alyn Lind credit for trying to be a fierce villain, but she’s no Samara Weaving.

97. Battlefield Earth (2000)

One of the most notoriously bad movies ever made, Battlefield Earth is largely remembered for being terrible due to its ties to Scientology. If you’ve actually seen the film, you will know that it is extremely campy. It also just looks and feels weird, being shot near-entirely in Dutch angles. That said, I feel like Battlefield Earth‘s notoriety is more due to its prominence and political leanings than its actual qualities. The movie is pretty terrible (hence its placement on the list), but it is also bad in an entertaining, expensive, professionally-made way. You could certainly do a whole lot worse, as you will soon see…

96. An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)

An American Werewolf in London‘s most hailed aspect was its amazing practical effects, so why the fuck did they think that a fully-CGI werewolf would be acceptable for its sequel? Bear in mind that this was done using 1997 CGI (that is to say, it looks worse than most modern made-for-TV movies). The film also seems to have misunderstood the comedic elements of its predecessor, attempting to go for a much more over-the-top tone, which is just grating.

95. Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 (2011)

This first Atlas Shrugged adaptation fails, not so much due to its deluded politics (the most offensive of which are toned down quite a bit), but due to being incredibly boring, cheap, and poorly-made. The film is all “tell, don’t show” and my God does it want nothing more than to go on didactic rants. There’s not even a payoff, since this is very much a “part one” movie, making it an even more inessential watch if you’re not prepared to strap in and watch its even worse sequels…

94. Ouija (2014)

Few horror movies are as limp as Ouija. It features dull characters, terrible attempts at scaring the audience, a toothless PG-13 rating, and is just plain boring to top it off. It’s a bad movie, and not even in a fun way, which makes it all the more shocking how good its prequel turned out (and makes this movie’s quality all the more offensive).

93. The Happytime Murders (2018)

I wanted to like The Happytime Murders. A goofy, raunchy, puppet-based cop comedy sounds like a good time. Furthermore, Melissa McCarthy gets too much hate; this seems like the sort of project she could do well in. Unfortunately, The Happytime Murders is just… stupid. It’s the most cliched cop movie premise you could ask for, with the only original thing being its puppet gimmick that it assumes will let it get by. Instead, it quickly turns into a one-note joke in a film which is direly short on laughs (we get it, it’s another puppet having sex and doing drugs, do you have any other jokes?). Hell, Melissa McCarthy barely even makes an impression, good or bad. She’s just “here” filling a role literally anyone else could have. Like a puppet without a master, the film is nowhere near good enough to hold itself up when its only gimmick is running this thin.

92. A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

A Nightmare on Elm Street seems like it should be a decent remake. Jackie Earl Haley is great casting for the new Freddy, it’s got an early performance from Rooney Mara, and it explores new ground with sleep deprivation and how that could bring nightmares into the waking realm, making Freddy even more unavoidable. Unfortunately, A Nightmare on Elm Street does one of my least favourite 80s tropes: “what if Satanic Panic, but real?” Considering that the Satanic Panic ruined several lives over a moral panic that was entirely fictional (not to mention that it made nerds and metalheads social pariahs for more than a decade), I hate seeing this concept get legitimized… and that’s not even getting into how they explicitly made Freddy a pedophile here. It works for the character, but my God, when they make it an overt part of the plot, it does not make him enjoyable to watch. Really though, the worst part of A Nightmare on Elm Street is how dull and formulaic it is, which is a real shame, because the original films are some of the most creative slashers in the entire industry.

91. Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

I often hear people saying that the only good Resident Evil movies are the first one and Apocalypse. These people are dead wrong. I can only imagine that they watched them once when they were young and haven’t seen them in at least fifteen years, because Apocalypse suuuuuucks (and so does the first Resident Evil movie, but it’s good enough at least to not end up on this list). This was the start of the “Alice is a Mary Sue” trope in these movies, and every other character ends up being upstaged by her, or they are just worthless to the narrative. The action isn’t even all that good either, thanks to the weak direction.

90. Friday the 13th: Part III (1982)

Friday the 13th: Part III is close to being enjoyable thanks to its cast of memorable weirdos (Shelly, the biker gang, the annoying hillbillies, fuckin’ Chili), some gnarly kills, and Chris is probably my favourite final girl in the entire franchise. However, the film really falls flat due to being a really dull rehash of the previous two films (which also weren’t that great for that matter). The directors of these films seem to think that tension is built by having characters dick around for several minutes until something happens, but in this movie they forgot that they probably should have these characters, y’know, actually do something. Instead, we get scenes like the bikers frolicking aimlessly in a barn for minutes on end when they’re supposed to be prepping for a vengeful arson. The film also was shot in 80s 3D, so it looks pretty embarrassing today. This is the sort of film that’s more enjoyable as a series of highlight clips on Youtube than it is as an actual viewing experience.

89. Fantastic 4 (2015)

Josh Trank’s much-maligned superhero reboot feels like it has executive meddling all over it. It’s interesting, with ambitions to be a gritty, morally grey, body-horror-inspired take on the material. Unfortunately, what we get here is half-baked, messy, and fails to capitalize on any potential in the premise, ultimately making the whole affair feel pointless.

88. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies should have been so simple: take the, er, skeleton of Pride and Prejudice and then add some over-the-top zombie action between the romantic drama. Instead, the film opts for an excessively-serious take on Pride and Prejudice with some scenes and lines changed to add in zombies, which makes them feel perfunctory rather than a key part of the story (imagine that). Oh and then add in that this is a wannabe-gory zombie film that’s being neutered by a PG-13 rating, so you can’t even get any visceral thrills to stave off the boredom. Add it all up and you’ve got a boring, one-note slog that it should have been a slam-dunk fun time at the movies.

87. Assassin’s Creed (2016)

Assassin’s Creed had all of the potential in the world, from its cast, to its production values, to the unusually strong narrative of its video game source material. Unfortunately, it’s all completely wasted on a script which strips out all of the mystery and intrigue of the games, spends 90% of its dialogue reiterating the exact same dialogue about free will over and over again, and is just plain dull. I would love to find out where exactly this project was screwed up, because there was so much potential for a great movie here that the fact that they missed by so much is a crying shame.

86. A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

A Good Day to Die Hard is, frankly, a really sad end for this storied franchise. Say what you will about some of the other Die Hard sequels, but this is the only one that is outright bad, with weak action sequences, a script by Skip Woods (that is to say: full of complicated political intrigue that does not translate well to a fast-paced action movie, making the whole thing seem dumb as all hell), and poor chemistry between Bruce Willis and Jai Courtney. Hell, even John McClane is annoying in this movie, which is a sentence that should never have to be written, but here we are.

85. Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)

I’ve been watching the Hellraiser sequels this year and, thus far, they haven’t been nearly as bad as I had heard. I legitimately kind of like the wild ambition of Bloodlines, and Inferno and Deader are way better and more interesting than they have any right to be. However, that cannot be said of Hellseeker, which is an absolute slog of a film. The film commits multiple deadly cinematic sins, most notably that it brings back original final girl Kirsty Cotton, only to kill her off in the opening minutes. Instead, we spend the rest of the runtime with her boring-ass husband, Trevor, who just looks constantly confused. The next hour and a half are spent in explicit dream logic, with no way to tell what is really happening and what is not, or when scenes shift from reality to fiction. This might sound like it could be spooky or leaves the film up for interpretation, but it’s not that deep. Instead, it just gets fucking annoying, causing me to stop caring about what is happening, because the film sure as hell doesn’t want me to invest in any of it. It doesn’t help that this movie came after the much better-executed Inferno and is clearly drawing inspiration from it, meaning that the reason for all this dream logic is pretty obvious if you had seen that film already.

84. Hellraiser: Hell on Earth (1992)

As bad as Hellseeker is, Hell on Earth definitely takes the cake as the worst Hellraiser I’ve seen (so far). You can feel the Weinsteins’ fingers all over this movie, forcing bigger body counts for Pinhead and the Cenobites to turn them into more traditional slasher villains. Those Cenobites, by the way, are just embarrassing this time around, with some of the ugliest designs in the entire franchise. All this results in a film which just does not work. The characters suck, the attempts to expand the mythology suck, the script sucks… everything just sucks here.

83. Wrath of the Titans (2012)

Despite its success, the Clash of the Titans remake was pretty bad, getting by from Liam Neeson saying “Release the kraken!” and being the first big 3D movie released after Avatar. I figured they’d try harder to justify a sequel, but somehow they managed to make a film which was even dumber and more generic than its predecessor (which is a feat in itself).

82. Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

Retribution is by far the dumbest Resident Evil movie. There’s shockingly little plot here: Alice is trapped in an Umbrella facility and needs to escape… that’s it. Meanwhile, a bunch of characters from the games (who are terribly brought to life on the big screen) are trying to break her out. Oh, and Milla Jovovich had just had kids, so now Alice is a mother, despite it never being an aspect of her character until now. How do they force this in? Well, she meets a kid who thinks she’s her mom, because Alice is stuck in a real-life simulation where Alice clones have been trying to survive a zombie apocalypse… life I said, it’s fucking dumb. We then get a bunch of admittedly decent action scenes, but there’s basically no substance to grab onto here. You can do better, trust me.

Oh, and that kid? Dead by the time the credits roll. Boy, being a mom sure was important to Alice!

81. Hitman (2007)

It’s bad when you’re watching a story that is so convoluted and nonsensical that you think “this must be a Skip Woods film”, and then check IMDb to confirm your suspicious are correct. I dunno if the guy just writes elaborate scripts which then get butchered on their way to screen, but he legitimately is one of the worst screenwriters in all of Hollywood.

80. Saw 3D (2010)

Saw 3D opens with a trap which has two guys strapped to a table saw. A woman, who is cheating on them both, is suspended above them. They are instructed by Jigsaw to take a life in order to free themselves. Oh, and this trap takes place in a public storefront, so they quickly draw a crowd of onlookers who just stand there and gawk rather than, y’know, trying to stop this attempted murder. It’s so bonkers that I legitimately thought that this was supposed to be a public theater satire of the Jigsaw killings, but no… it’s a real Jigsaw trap and they actually want us to take this whole thing seriously. It was at this point that I realized that Saw 3D was going to suck.

Saw 3D is a cartoonish embarrassment, easily the worst Saw film ever made. There are some pretty nasty traps here, but they’re undermined by significantly more traps which are just idiotic> The colour grading is awful due to being shot in 3D, which makes the copious amounts of blood look hot pink. It also features an infuriating finale, with perhaps the most unjustified death of the entire franchise. It’s absolutely no wonder the franchise took a seven year hiatus to try to wash the stink of this movie off.

79. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Most of the Friday the 13th movies are consistently mediocre, rarely deviating from a pretty simple formula. However, around the time of Part VII, the producers started feeling like they needed to bring in some gimmicks, and Jason Takes Manhattan seemed like it could be the most exciting of these. The promise of having Jason head into the big city to carve up teens sounded like it could shake up the formula just enough to be a big, blockbuster event. Unfortunately, Jason Takes Manhattan is notorious for being one of the most disappointing films in the entire franchise. Pretty much everyone knows that the New York section of the film only last about twenty minutes and the rest of the film is spent on a cruise ship, where Jason somehow manages to go unnoticed as he kills tons of irritating kids who give us no reason to actually care about them. The film also introduces an idiotic “kid Jason” subplot which is one of the most embarrassing ideas in the entire franchise (which is saying something, considering some of the bullshit they added in the latter-day sequels).

78. Survival of the Dead (2009)

I’ll give George A. Romero credit for continuing to make films and try to push the zombie genre forward as he was approaching his seventieth year. Unfortunately, Survival of the Dead was an embarrassing note to end that career on. You can see glimmers of the social commentary which helped make his original Dead trilogy so good. The film takes place on an island where a bunch of ranchers are attempting to cure their undead relatives. Cowboy and Hatfield/McCoy shenanigans ensue from there. Unfortunately, the film is just fucking stupid, cheap, and poorly-shot, with dull characters. About the only thing that actually stood out to me was that the film answers the question “What happens if you bite a zombie?” That’s… pretty dire if it’s the only thing that really stands out about the film (the answer is “You become a zombie”, by the way).

77. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)

I fucking hate this movie. Paul W.S. Anderson pulls a bunch of shit from his ass to try to make sense of this franchise he’s cobbled together and try to give it some sort of satisfying send-off. As you’d probably expect, the results are really dumb and not satisfying in the least. What you may not expect is that the actions scenes kind of suck here as well, negating the one defense that people will try to use to justify liking these movies. Worst of all though is that a man died and a stuntwoman got maimed making this piece of shit movie, all because Paul W.S. Anderson and the other producers cheaped out on the production and put their crew at risk. Imagine dying or having to get your arm amputated, all for goddamn Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. Fuck this movie, it deserves to rot in hell.

76. Superman III (1983)

This movie is just so embarrassing. Superman becomes a secondary character in his own film, while Richard Pryor performs a bunch of cartoon antics that take up way too much screen time. The plot is incredibly dumb, full of the childish jokes that people complained about in the theatrical cut of Superman II since Richard Lester has taken over full directing duties this time around. It’s kind of a shame too, because the cast are generally great. There’s also a cool subplot where Superman is turned evil, but then Clark Kent splits from him and the two sides of Superman have to fight for control. It’s a genuinely good concept, which is entirely out of place in a film where a woman gets pushed into a computer and is instantly turned into an android…

75. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Michael Bay’s original Transformers film was actually pretty well-regarded when it released. It wasn’t until this movie, Revenge of the Fallen, that people really came to realize that these movies were not good. The action was incoherent, the narrative was dumb, and the film was incredibly lowbrow (to the point of having two racist caricature robots and a transformer with a set of testicles), and the film was overloaded with CGI.

74. Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

Honestly though, I think Age of Extinction is even worse than its more notorious older sibling. This is the Transformers film with a character who carries a card on him to justify statutory rape. We’ve got Mark Wahlberg taking over as the leading man… which I guess is an upgrade? He’s incredibly dull, but at least he doesn’t annoy me like Shia LaBeouf’s Sam did. We also get a healthy dose of Stanley Tucci, which is a highlight, but even watching him doing cartoonish antics gets grating the longer it goes on. For the most part, Age of Extinction is every bit as loud and dumb as any other Transformers movie, but what puts it over the edge for me is my experience when I watched it in theaters. The movie had dragged on to what felt like a climactic action sequence and the story seemed to be wrapping up. I legitimately thought the movie was about to end, and if it did, then this wouldn’t have been my least-favourite Transformers movie. But no, then suddenly the film goes to China, and I check my watch: we’re only halfway through this movie, what the fuck!? Suffice to say, the back half of this movie was worse than the front, making this drawn out experience feel even more torturous.

73. The Wicker Man (2006)

The quintessential “Youtube highlight reel” movie, The Wicker Man isn’t really worth watching. The clips you see online are weird, but in-context they do make some sense. However, this movie is a pure, bad 2000s horror remake (glossy production, big budget, weak horror elements). It’s only differentiator is that Cage’s performance is absolutely bonkers, but you really should just stick with the highlight reels.

72. Death Note (2017)

I have the perhaps notorious opinion that the Death Note anime is kind of trash. In what world is a show, where 70% of its episodes are bad and then 30% are great, “one of the greatest anime of all-time”? So, believe me, I was not coming into this Death Note adaptation expecting it to suck. Hell, I was actually kind of excited, because I already liked Adam Wingard for You’re Next and Willem Dafoe as Ryuk was awesome. I love the premise of Death Note, so I was eager to see if a different interpretation could do better. Unfortunately, this Death Note movie squanders basically everything that actually was good about the manga and anime in favour of a by-the-numbers supernatural crime drama. Gone are all the philosophical musings about morality and justice which were the main reason the series was so compelling to begin with. Instead, it’s just generic cop plots and high school killer clichés.

71. The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)

In high school, my friends and I would do these really amateur rifftrax of movies we didn’t like. We got through most of the Twilight movies, but I feel like we gave them a fair shake (we all felt that Eclipse was not bad). I get that these movies are not for me, and I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum… but, my God, this movie was a torturous experience. It is so slow and dull, stretching a thin plot over more than two hours of runtime. The main characters make this feel even worse, because I didn’t give a shit about any of them (I will say that the background characters have much more interesting personalities though).

70. Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

When I was ordering this list, Transformers: Age of Extinction became a bit of a barometer for me. I’d think of bad blockbusters and ask “Is this movie worse than Age of Extinction?” to help rank them. For Independence Day: Resurgence, that was a very quick and definitive “YES”, which should give you an idea of how bad it is. This long-belated sequel is even louder and dumber than the worst Transformers film. For a movie that was in development for twenty years, it’s almost shocking how half-baked Resurgence feels. There are lots of pointless subplots, the “escalated” threat feels no where near as potent as it did in the original, and the characters have basically no development and give us no reason to actually care about them. In fact, the only characters I felt anything for were the gay scientist couple, but that was mainly because of their charming performances rather than the script. If you want mindless action, then the movie will deliver that, but it’s not even particularly noteworthy in that regard. Just rewatch the original if you need some stupid fun, it did that far more competently.

69. The Purge (2013)

The Purge was the biggest disappointment I have had in theaters. The premise is incredible: crime becomes legal for twelve hours once a year! However, they clearly had no budget to work with, so they set the entire film inside a single house. The entire premise just gets used as an excuse for why their home is getting invaded, why their power has been cut, and why they can’t just leave. Making matters worse, most of the film revolves around the Sandin family somehow managing to get lost in their own goddamn house as they try to find a homeless veteran who snuck in to try to escape the purgers. I didn’t expect The Purge to be anywhere near amazing, but it failed to be even entertaining.

68. The Angry Birds Movie (2016)

If you are, like, the youngest of kids, then Angry Birds probably passes for you, but just barely… Unless you are amongst the most easily entertained of people, Angry Birds is just a collection of dull “comedy” scenes stitched together haphazardly, which are anchored by a bunch of irritating pastiche characters, all in an effort to try to turn this shitty mobile game into a proper multi-media franchise. Yeah… good luck with that, Rovio.

67. Don’t Breathe 2 (2021)

Don’t Breathe 2 is one of those sequels that is fundamentally flawed in its conception and therefore doomed to failure, no matter how it was handled. The Blind Man is a relentless monster and trying to humanize him for this sequel is an idiotic move. This would just be a boring, run-of-the-mill father revenge movie, but it’s a sequel to Don’t Breathe. There’s certain expectations that come with that, and this film does not meet them! There’s barely any tension to be had. Worse though, the film doesn’t even acknowledge that The Blind Man is a psycho rapist, we’re just supposed to accept his own justification that he “technically didn’t rape anyone”, forget about it, and accept that he’s changed. It’s so fundamentally stupid that it brings the rest of the film down around it.

66. Red Dawn (2012)

I will never forget how hard I laughed when I was watching Red Dawn, and then it suddenly turned into an ad for Subway. I’m not even joking, it was the most blatant product placement I had ever seen in my life. Josh Hutcherson even called the employee a sandwich artist and made sure they used his favourite warm and flaky bread!

I thought that the original Red Dawn was kind of crappy, so I wasn’t even going into this expecting it to not live up to the original. However, this film can’t even reach those modest heights. The film gets let down by its characters (who, if they aren’t just bland, are straight-up unlikeable), mediocre action sequences, and a script which is insulting to the audience’s intelligence at times. Also, the fact that North Korea are the ones conquering America is fucking hilarious (and then it’s frustrating when you realize this is because they shot the film to be about a Chinese invasion, but then edited it so that they could try to sell the film in China… like, have some integrity to something other than the almighty dollar).

65. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011)

Look, as bad as New Moon was, it doesn’t hold a candle to Breaking Dawn – Part 1. The previous Twilight films barely had enough plot to fill one movie. The thought that you could get two movies out of Breaking Dawn is laughable, and the film suffers due to Lionsgate’s desire to double-dip their audience. The film is every bit as boring as New Moon and is just as long as the other movies, but there’s less plot to work with than ever before, making this an even more torturous viewing.

64. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)

I have so much I want to complain about with this movie, but I’ll keep it relatively brief. An adaptation that’s more faithful to the source material makes sense for Resident Evil, but there are so many bone-headed decisions made here and half-baked ideas. The film is loaded with Easter eggs and callbacks to the games, but these end up serving no purpose to the actual narrative, which makes them feel cheap and insulting to the audience’s intelligence. This movie’s girl-boss version of Claire is somehow less interesting than than her “she’s just a normal tomboy” persona from the games. Leon being portrayed as a washed-up failure of a cop is an interesting idea, but he is given absolutely nothing to do in the entire movie, so it just feels like someone had a personal vendetta against his character. The idea of having Raccoon City as a ghost town feels like it was done to make filming during COVID restrictions easier, but it ruins the entire premise of a mass outbreak that makes the games’ version of these events so compelling. Resident Evil games don’t exactly have great stories, but the first and second games have very different tones and plot structures. You don’t have to be a fucking genius to realize that, if you mash the plots of the first two games together, it doesn’t make any sense and ends up creating a narrative that is so much worse than either by itself. Oh, and don’t even get me started on what are the stealthiest zombies I’ve ever seen in a movie, dear God. The one positive I can say is that the cast are all really good, I just wish they had been given some proper material to work with. As is, Welcome to Raccoon City is as bad as the worst Paul W.S. Anderson Resident Evil movies, which is something I never expected to have to say.

63. Taken 3 (2014)

Look, we were already burnt out on the Liam Neeson action movie after Taken 2, but Taken 3 still felt like one of Bryan Mills’ signature nut punches. The film has two major issues which leave it hamstrung. First of all, the action just plain sucks, due in large part to the haphazard, rapid-fire editing (not to mention that there is a distinct lack of actual action this time around during basically the entire second act). Secondly, the writing is abysmal. Idiotic plot conveniences abound. I literally slapped myself in the face at least five times during the movie in frustration at how stupid everyone was for the sake of the plot. Not to go on a tangent, but I noticed the freaking bagels the second he found Lenore dead: he had an ironclad alibi and could have been released in a couple hours if the police just checked a fucking security camera. Instead, Bryan Mills decides to get into gun fights and car chases with the police every five minutes, presumably because he’s an idiot. Beyond even that though, I’m kind of insulted that they fridged Lenore to begin with. For one thing, it is such an overused and sexist trope that it demonstrates just how lazy the writers are. For another, it retroactively makes Taken 2 even worse by making its third act pointless, since we now know she’s going to die anyway.

62. R.I.P.D. (2013)

R.I.P.D. is what happens when a movie exec decides to cater to all the things that people like. It combines Men in Black, Ghostbusters, Jeff Bridges’ Rooster Cogburn, and Ryan Reynolds (before people were getting annoyed with him). However, the resulting movie ends up feeling way too juvenile for its own good.

The film has some funny moments, but more often than not you’re left groaning at the bafflingly stupid, juvenile jokes which were thrown in for no good reason. Like… there’s a scene where they’re chasing the bad guys, and these bad guys are just farting constantly as they run away… it’s so funny that I forgot to laugh. The plot was very formulaic as well, which could have been fine if the rest of the film was enjoyable, but seeing that it wasn’t, it just ends up making the whole thing feel worse.

61. Catwoman (2004)

Catwoman is one of those films where I cannot believe that they actually released this in theaters. It is such a baffling movie, with unhinged performances from Sharon Stone and Halle Berry. I’d love to say that this movie is a misunderstood masterpiece, as it does have a great look for Berry and some style, it’s just so, so dumb. We got a lot of really bad comic book movies in the 2000s, and Catwoman is undoubtedly the worst of them.

60. Terminator Genisys (2015)

The only nice thing I can say about Terminator Genisys is that it retroactively made people fonder of Salvation. The entire premise of having John Connor turn evil feels downright blasphemous to the series’ legacy. Emilia Clarke and Jai Courtney are about the two worst actors you could have picked to lead a major film like this, which is even worse when you compare them to Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn. The film is also basically a “greatest hits”, remixing scenes from significantly better Terminator movies to lesser effect. Predictably, this makes the film feel like it has no identity of its own, other than being really fucking dumb.

59. Alien: Resurrection (1997)

God I hate this movie. I get that they wanted to go for a different tone, but… guys, it sucks so bad. The Whedon-isms are grating and clash with the off-beat style of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The aliens also stop being the real threat about two thirds of the way through, leaving us with an abomination of a replacement. Oh, and Ripley fucking suuuuucks in this film.

58. Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

I HATED Fallen Kingdom, so when I find myself thinking back on it with some fondness after watching Dominion, you know that Trevorrow has screwed up big-time. There are so many things I could complain about in this movie, but here’s just a handful of them:

  • The legacy characters are blatantly shoehorned into this movie. You could cut them out of the film entirely with basically no effect to the main plot.
  • The movie has stripped out the horror elements of the series entirely. It’s now just straight-up action, which is far less interesting.
  • The bad guys are all a bunch of unthreatening weenies. I don’t even mean just the human characters either: Giganotosaurus, which is only in this movie to give the T-rex something to fight, has absolutely no bearing on the greater plot and can barely muster a threat to our characters (compare that to the Spinosaur in Jurassic Park III to really understand how dire this film is at everything).
  • The film is incredibly bloated. At one point it felt like it was going to end and then I realized there were (somehow) still fourty-five more minutes left.
  • The film commits to some incredibly stupid retcons. These retcons obviously were put in place to try to respond to criticism of Fallen Kingdom, but in their cowardice, they just made it worse.
  • The stupidest thing about this movie though is that it ends with the message “hey, genetic manipulation is cool actually and will solve all our problems with it!” How much further from Jurassic Park could you get than that?

Dominion is just further evidence that Jurassic Park should never have had sequels, or at the very least, the franchise should have not been brought back from extinction after Crichton’s death. I’m probably going to do another round of Retrospective catch-ups eventually, so expect more expanded thoughts on this movie in the future.

57. Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist (2023)

GOD, this movie is just fucking exhausting. It’s like spending all your time on Twitter reading what the grifters and outrage merchants are saying; it makes you want to scratch your face off in frustration. That said, complain all you want about the in-your-face politics: the real, crippling issue it faces is that it is criminally dull. For reference, the original Left Behind adapted all the material in this movie into a fairly brisk hour. This movie stretches that out to two hours and it absolutely drags as a result. Add in some very lethargic performances (especially from ol’ Sorbo himself) and the aforementioned ham-fisted politics, and this is a film that struggles to maintain interest.

56. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009)

Oh good, finally we get a movie that is just really badly made rather than one that actively pisses me off just thinking about it. Put simply, The Legend of Chun-Li is crap on basically every level. It’s pretty embarrassing when you make a Street Fighter film which gets completely outclassed in all regards by the notorious Jean Claude van Damme film, but they somehow managed that here. The Legend of Chun-Li is not even all that entertaining either, with some very limp fight scenes. It also features a couple shockingly violent (for PG-13) scenes which are jarring against the overall light tone, further making you wonder what the hell anyone was thinking while making this movie.

55. The Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018)

I legitimately really enjoyed the original Escape Plan movie, it was a good 80s throwback film with a fun cast and premise. I didn’t expect much from a sequel, but if it could capture even a fraction of the previous film’s quality, it would still be decent. Unbelievably, Escape Plan 2: Hades is so ineptly put together that I can’t believe that Stallone and Dave Bautista signed on to be in it. There might have been a decent movie in here somewhere, but it’s totally wasted on a poorly shot and horrendous, incoherently edited film.

54. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Meyers (1989)

Halloween 5 is a pretty terrible film, even by slasher sequel standards. The film was shot without a completed script, and it totally shows, because there is no way that someone could sit down and intentionally write out the events of this film before it was filmed. The film throws in a bunch of dumb mythology about ill-defined bloodlines and curses, and Tina is one of the dumbest final girls in slasher history, making for a movie where you can feel your brain cells dying as you watch it.

53. Halloween Kills (2021)

My God, Halloween truly is the worst major horror franchise, because so many of its entries fucking suck. Halloween Kills is the most recent of these abominations (I… mostly liked Halloween Ends?). In a lot of ways, it’s a high-production value version of an 80s slasher sequel: a terrible plot and characters, but lots of brutal, gory kills. However, this feels so much worse for two reasons: 1) Halloween (2018) was so good and Kills comes nowhere close to it, and 2) The movie drags like mad. It feels positively aimless, wasting lengthy scenes on mostly-dull characters and half-baked plots with unearned resolutions. The ending also just straight-up pisses me off. About the only thing this movie does right is making Michael Meyers a terrifying, unstoppable monster, so I can understand why some hardcore Halloween fans would enjoy this. For my part, I was bored from start to finish of this wheel-spinning, poorly-edited, frustrating mess.

52. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

I have to give Jason Goes to Hell some credit for at least attempting to do something completely different with the Friday the 13th formula, but they absolutely failed and the results are baffling to witness. Suddenly adding a bunch of mystical lore nine movies in to try to explain some of the weirder aspects of the previous films was a fool’s errand, and having Jason be this body-hopping spirit is way less interesting than if he’s just an unstoppable, undead killing machine. This fundamental issue makes the film borderline unwatchable, even if it does have some fun characters and really gnarly kills that get lost in the shuffle. Oh, and do I need to mention that the movie ends with Jason climbing up a dead woman’s vagina so that he can be reborn from her corpse? Yeah… this is quite the film.

51. Howling III (1987)

Howling III is one of the most unhinged movies I’ve ever seen. I’ll give them some credit, they were swinging for the fences with this movie: it is brimming with ambition and a sincerity; you can tell that this was a passion project for Philippe Mora. Unfortunately, this film is absolutely deranged, featuring terrible werewolf designs, awful special effects (the scenes with the werewolf baby puppet make me want to pour bleach in my eyes), some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen, and a certifiably insane script with too many superfluous characters. This is a film which packs a whole five or six acts into an hour and a half runtime (for reference, your average movie tells its story over three acts in the same timeframe), meaning that it has no time to actually linger on any ideas, but also just wastes a bunch of time on pointless bullshit. Criminally, it’s not even all that entertaining either.

And that’s it for part one. If you’re reading this the day it comes out, then part two will be out tomorrow!

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Attack on Titan is Kind of Trash

~ Barloq ~ 5 Comments

Attack on Titan is one of those blockbuster series that you can expect even the most casual manga/anime fan to enjoy, up there with Death Note, Sword Art Online and Full Metal Alchemist, among others. However, like Death Note, I have never understood the praise this series has gotten – with both of these series, it’s almost like people are in love with the fantastic premises more than the actual execution. I watched the first two seasons of the anime when they came out and was initially intrigued, but soon lost interest due to the glacial pacing and wasted characters, to the point where I dropped off entirely a couple episodes into season three. That said, I knew that there were big, interesting developments as the story went along and so when Humble Bundle were offering 26 volumes of the manga (plus a ton of spin-off manga to go with it) for cheap, I decided to jump on the opportunity. I’ll be honest – the manga sunk its hooks in and captivated my attention in a way that the anime never could. I greedily devoured multiple volumes every day as if I was one of the series’ titans. There were a few niggling issues, sure, but the writing was too damn engaging to really hold this against the series.

…and then chapter 100 comes along and out of nowhere the series’ quality plummets off of a fucking cliff. I’m serious, as soon as I hit this chapter I said to myself “Wait, what the hell!?”, but kept going because “The writing has been strong to this point, surely Hajime Isayama knows what he is doing”… Well, turns out he didn’t, because the last 40 chapters of Attack on Titan are disastrous, going off the rails in ever more spectacular ways and outright harming the preceding chapters in the process. It’s so bad that, as of the time of this writing, the fanbase are still up in arms about it. I would personally say that it’s a disaster on par with Game of Thrones season eight, an ending so bad that it torpedoed most peoples’ previous love of the series.

So, what is so bad about Attack on Titan? Let me count the ways… Oh and just a note, this is mainly going to be based off of the manga – the anime is extremely faithful to the manga so story criticisms are likely to carry over between the two. My main criticisms unique to the anime are that the pacing is painfully slow (like, when your goal is to pick up a rock and move it, it shouldn’t take you two whole fucking episodes to pick up the goddamn rock) and that the show leaves me questioning how anyone ever gets caught and/or killed by titans (they are portrayed as being so slow, stupid and unthreatening that everyone who is dies does so because the stupid morons were frozen in place for minutes at a time).

Anway, with that said, you know what time it is!

The Characters

Before we get to the ending we should probably lay some groundwork on the issues I had with Attack on Titan, even before it all went bad. Foremost among these issues were the characters. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great characters in Attack on Titan – Jean is by far the best character of the main cast of heroes, Reiner is such a compelling and tragic character, Gabi has a strong character arc (which is one of the few bright spots in the last 40 chapters), Erwin Smith is a good example of a morally-complicated leader and Captain Levi is just cool. The story itself mainly centers on Eren Yeager and his two childhood friends, Mikasa and Armin, but unfortunately Eren is a generic, boring anime protagonist. You’ve seen this kind of protagonist before, someone whose sole characteristic is a philosophical opposition to some external force which is further fueled by a defining, tragic event. In the early parts of the manga his character entirely revolves around wanting to kill the titans and save humanity and this is fine for this kind of story, if not particularly interesting. I’ll cover more of Eren’s character development as we go along, but the main thing to know for now is that the series is centered on a rather shallow character.

Then there’s Mikasa, who initially seems like she’s going to be a total badass. She’s extremely capable, the best fighter in her class in every category, but is emotionally distant. Unfortunately, her character revolves entirely around Eren to the point of being ridiculous. Seriously, when she is told that Eren was killed by titans, she straight-up tries to commit suicide and almost gets herself killed several times trying to protect him. Why is she like this? Well, turns out that her parents were killed and she was kidnapped by robbers, but then Eren came along and fucking stabbed them to death and then told her to stab the last one to save him, so she believes she owes him her unending devotion (even though, y’know, she saves his ass several times and he doesn’t return the favour). As a result, Mikasa’s character is constantly kneecapped by being slavishly devoted to Eren, while also being upstaged by Eren at all times in the process. To make matters even worse, Mikasa also has the indignity of being upstaged twice, because as the stone-cold badass she occupies the same role in the story as Captain Levi. As soon as Levi gets introduced, every time something badass needs to be done Levi gets to do it, leaving Mikasa as Eren’s over-glorified bodyguard for the rest of the series. It sucks, and to make matters worse, it’s treated like some sort of revelation towards the end of the story that, oh my God, Mikasa is in love with Eren! And then we discover that Mikasa’s talents aren’t because she’s just a badass, it’s actually because her family were experiments infused with the strength of titans… and also because she’s Asian. I’m serious, if you thought Midichlorians were the stupidest demystification in fiction, you clearly haven’t read Attack on Titan. As if that wasn’t enough, it’s also implied that Mikasa rejecting Eren turns him into a genocidal maniac in the series’ ending. It definitely comes across to me like this is the intended reading, but even if it isn’t, it’s self-internalized by Mikasa and is just another shitty development for this wasted character. Oh and worst of all? One of the last panels in the series is Mikasa kissing Eren’s severed head WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!?!?!

I bet you thought that that was a joke. Also, I wanted to make this the featured image for this so much.

Armin, on the other hand, is easily the best character of the main trio. He isn’t physically impressive, describing himself as weak and useless on several occasions. However, he has a sharp mind which gets the characters through many dire situations and he draws strength from his friendship with Eren and Mikasa, while inspiring them in turn. The main characters manage to survive impossible odds because of Armin’s keen wit on several occasions, showing how invaluable he is to the survey corps. In perhaps the most climactic arc in the whole series, the retaking of Shiganshina district, Armin’s character arc hits its peak. The survey corps are nearly wiped out by a trap, but Armin’s strategic mind and his deep friendship with Eren are what wins the day, as he sacrifices himself to allow Eren to defeat the Colossal Titan. It’s a heartbreaking moment and a perfect death for the character, showing the pyrrhic cost of victory with the decimation of the corps and the sacrificial death of Commander Erwin Smith… but then, in perhaps the first example of Isayama committing a cardinal sin with his narrative, he reveals that both Armin and Erwin Smith somehow survived their injuries and are barely holding onto life. Let me lay this out to you so you can truly understand how insane this is – Armin was fucking cooked to death by the Colossal Titan, covered in full body burns (not to mention that he probably burned out his lungs in the process). This makes for a very intense chapter where the surviving characters fight and argue over which of these character should be healed (they happen to have a serum which will resurrect one of them and give them the powers of the Colossal Titan). They ultimately decide to save Armin, a decision which haunts him as he feels unworthy of being saved instead of Erwin Smith. This could have made for a fantastic new character arc in the latter-half of the narrative… except that Armin does nothing of consequence for the rest of the story (with the one exception being that he blows up a fleet of ships with his titan powers, but it’s not like this actually has any bearing on the plot). I’m serious, this genius character who had carried the heroes to victory several times up to this point gets resurrected and then does absolutely nothing of value for the rest of the story. I should also point out that the latter-half of the narrative revolves around several conspiracies and involves trusting clearly-untrustworthy characters. You’re telling me that Armin couldn’t do a goddamn thing to unravel any of these plots? Oh wait, that would have inconvenienced Isayama’s narrative, that’s why they neutered Armin. But… why even bother resurrecting him at all at that point? I’m serious, he had a fantastic death, just let him die instead of dragging out his character as a shadow of his former self.

The Ending

So, how exactly does the last third of Attack on Titan drop the ball so badly? Well, it all starts with a sneak attack by Eren on the nation of Marley. Marley are attempting to get support for a global coalition to wipe out Eren’s people, the Eldians living on the island of Paradis. The Eldian bloodline are the only ones capable of turning into titans and they are viewed as monsters because of this, and because in the past the Eldians had conquered the world and committed atrocities which they are still hated for. At the time of the story, Eldians are a ghettoized and demonized people, used as weapons of war by Marley through forced transformation into titans, with the only “free” Eldians having isolated themselves behind their walls on Paradis for nearly one hundred years now. So how does Eren react to this call to commit genocide against the people of Paradis? Why, he gives them all the excuse they need to go to war with them by becoming a fucking terrorist and attacking the public gathering of nations!!! Might I add that this declaration of intent was a huge public event, with dignitaries and civilians from all around the world gathered together and caught up in the crossfire as Eren rampages through the city. His actions force the other people of Paradis to act as well, causing a gigantic titan fight right in the middle of a city and leading to the aforementioned destruction of the Marley fleet by Armin in an attempt to debilitate their military response.

Why does this moment bother me so much and why does it mark the point where Attack on Titan nosedives in quality? Well, I believe that the issue here comes from the way that Eren’s character is handled throughout the story to this point. At the outset of Attack on Titan, Eren makes all sorts of bold declarations about how he’s going to kill all the titans, but in his very first mission his blind rage gets him consumed and seemingly killed until it turns out that he’s secretly had titan powers all along. He then spends the next several volumes trying (unsuccessfully) to understand and get control of his titan powers. During this time, he learns that he cannot just act as he wishes to, he needs to trust his allies who see the bigger picture. Then during the coup storyline, Eren gets kidnapped and spends most of the arc sidelined. Finally, during the retaking of Shiganshina, Eren does a lot of the fighting but he’s not really making the decisions, by this point he’s just following orders to save humanity. As you may notice, in addition to being shallow and boring, Eren is a passive protagonist, which is a lethal combination. Whenever I see people saying stuff like “Eren is so cool!” or “Eren is a chad!” my first response is “…seriously?” What Mandela Effect universe did they come from? This makes Eren’s sudden turn into being an active antagonist in the final third of the story so jarring and unconvincing – it just doesn’t make sense given the trajectory of the character up until that point. Those Game of Thrones season eight comparisons don’t end at how bad the ending is, this sudden heel-turn by a major character is a big reason why the ending is so unsatisfying. It’s not just that Eren attacks Marley either – after touring other countries he decides to wipe out the freaking world’s population in order to save the people of Paradis. WHAT??? In my opinion, Isayama didn’t lay the groundwork for this twist. Having a character say “My friends are the most important thing in the world to me” isn’t justification for “Okay, I guess I’m going to kill everyone in the world now”, especially after he tours the world and sees that there are many good people within it.

Beyond forcing Eren to become a villain “because plot”, the final third of the story has so many stupid twists that it wants us to go along with. The biggest among these is the idea that anyone believed that Zeke (an Eldian working for Marley who has the power to turn into the Beast Titan… and also, Eren’s half-brother) could possibly be working to save Paradis. Like, how did anyone in the survey corps go along with this? The guy was gleefully turning Paradis’ civilians into titans and hurling rocks at the survey corps (which killed Erwin Smith, I may add) a couple volumes earlier, now you’re trying to convince me that anyone believes that he has the best interests of Paradis in mind? The fact that the characters lampshade how stupid this is by talking about stealing his titan powers away from him and yet do not do it does not make this any better. We later discover that Zeke truly does have nefarious plans all along – he’s planning on sterilizing all Eldians the world over, killing them all off in about a hundred years and ending all conflict with them… a horrifyingly evil plan which turns out to be preferable to what actually ends up happening…

Then there are the numerous plot twists involving the Yeagerists, a radical faction of Marley defectors and Paradis soldiers who view Eren and Zeke as saviours. This is a huge conspiracy which somehow goes undetected for years, but even within the Yeagerists themselves there are secret sub-factions, some of whom strive towards Zeke’s sterilization plan and some of whom strive towards Eren’s plan of wiping out the world beyond Paradis by releasing the titans within the walls in an event known as “the rumbling”. There are some clever moments within this storyline (particularly the revelation that Zeke has been spiking the soldiers’ wine supplies with his spinal fluid, which creates a ticking time bomb where he can turn everyone affected into a titan at will), but for the most part it is exhausting and pushes the bounds of belief that this conspiracy wouldn’t be uncovered at some point, especially considering how fanatical these Yeagerists are. Thankfully, it all mercifully ends with Eren getting his head blown off by an anti-titan rifle, but just before his brain shuts down he makes contact with Zeke and then sets his plan in motion, beginning the rumbling which leads into the final arc where the main characters have to stop him once and for all.

The final third of Attack on Titan is a good example of the dangers of the mystery box style of storytelling. Attack on Titan absolutely thrives on mystery boxes. What are the titans? What is outside the walls? What is Eren’s father’s secret he keeps locked in the basement? Where did the Colossal and Armoured Titans come from? As the story goes along, and even as some mysteries get answered, new mysteries appear. Why can Eren turn into a titan? Why are there titans in the walls? Why did Reiner, Bertolt and Annie betray the survey corps? How did Eren control the titans that one time? While this kind of storytelling is a big reason why Attack on Titan is such a compelling read, it’s also a big reason why it all feels so deflating in the last third of the narrative, as the mysteries it has been building up either have unsatisfying answers or get thrown to the wayside. One big question I always had was why did Ymir go with Bertolt and Reiner, abandoning Historia (who she is clearly in love with) in the process? What duty could she do that would outweigh protecting Historia and fighting alongside the people of Paradis? Well, turns out, absolutely nothing because by the end we realize she literally handed herself over to the people of Marley to be killed and all she got for it was a promise from Reiner not to kill Historia… whoop-de-fuckin’-do. This is a fairly minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but it’s one that makes repeat readings of Attack on Titan more unsatisfying because Isayama puts twists and mysteries ahead of actual payoff. Another big example of this is Annie, who is revealed to be the Female Titan and encases herself in crystal early in the story to avoid capture. She spends almost a hundred chapters encased in this crystal, the audience tense the entire time, knowing that it’s only a matter of time until she decides to free herself and wreak havoc once more… only for Isayama to finally remember “oh shit, I’m in the end game, better release Annie now!” and have her just randomly escape and join the heroes to take down Eren. It’s a rushed, jarring and unsatisfying payoff which feels like it was done as an afterthought rather than actually planned to go this way. Oh, and just to shit on everything even more, it’s revealed that Eren’s titan power allows him to see into the memories of past and future inheritors of the Attack Titan, meaning that he’s known what was going to happen all along and has been manipulating his past self from the future into making all the misery of the series happen (including killing his own mother, setting the events of the story in motion). Just… holy fucking shit, that is a stupid fucking twist. I literally rolled my eyes and said “Are you fucking kidding me?” when Isayama dropped that steaming load on my lap. Oh, and in the final chapter, it turns out that Eren told Armin about this and that he’s going to massacre the world and Armin thanks him! AND THEN Eren uses his titan powers to ERASE ARMIN’S MEMORY OF THE CONVERSATION UNTIL THE MOMENT OF EREN’S DEATH. Jesus fucking Christ, fuck mystery boxes, fuck “big twists”, just tell me a good story for fuck sake!

I would be remiss if I failed to mention the most egregious waste of character in the last third of the story: Historia Reiss gets completely shafted. She’s a crucial character during the middle chapters of the story, revealed to be the secret heir to the throne of Paradis and the only one who can change the fate of the nation after a hundred years of oppressive rule. The whole point of the survey corp coup storyline is to put Historia in charge of the nation, so surely when they get her in charge something important happens, right? Well… no, not in the slightest. Isayama knocks her up and then sticks her in an orphanage for the rest of the story. I’m not joking, this major character shows up in maybe three or four panels in the entire last third of the story, which is absolutely insane and down-right insulting. Why do this, you may ask? Well, I believe Isayama got high on twists and then wrote himself into a corner. Part of Historia’s importance is that, as a royal descendant, she is capable of unlocking the power of the Founding Titan, which is possessed by Eren but unable to be used unless he comes into contact with a titan of royal descent. There are several discussions about turning Historia into a titan in order to use this power for their advantage, so why don’t they do it and give one of the established, main characters something to do after hyping them up during the entire middle-section of the story? Well, Isayama decides to instead reveal that Zeke is secretly of royal descent all along and is already a titan, so he’s capable of unlocking the power of the Founding Titan for Eren and is more than happy to do so. Again, this makes the fact that the survey corps places trust in Zeke even more insane. You clearly can’t trust the guy, kill Zeke and transfer his powers on to Historia, goddammit! And, again, lampshading this idea and then not following through with it doesn’t make it okay!

As if the ending wasn’t bad enough, it has been revealed that in the soon-to-be-released final volume of Attack on Titan there are going to be additional pages which add onto the ending. The existing ending sees Eren use the rumbling to wipe out 80% of the world’s population before being killed by his old friends in the survey corps in order to stop him. This erases the ability to turn into a titan for all Eldians around the world, meaning that their race can no longer become monsters. They return home to Paradis where the Eldians live in peace thanks to Eren’s sacrifice and it’s implied that Eldians are viewed as heroes who saved the world. It’s a poor ending, but it’s going to get even worse when Isayama shits on it even more by showing a time skip where Paradis gets carpet bombed into oblivion. Goddamn, I guess preventing complete global genocide was the wrong course of action then? I get that this is thematically appropriate – Attack on Titan frequently shows that cycles of violence are inevitable and that people are incapable of uniting, but holy fuck is that a cynical way to end your story. It effectively undoes everything that has happened because none of it matters in the end and, like I said, it makes the lesson “don’t half-ass a genocide, you have to wipe out all of your enemies to secure your future”. Just… it’s a story. I don’t care how pessimistic you are, break the fucking cycle you cynical dickhead!

So… How ‘Bout That Imperialism and Antisemitism…?

I was aware of the commentary about Attack on Titan taking a fascist, imperialist and antisemitic turn in its latter-half, so I was keeping a critical eye out for this while reading. While I feel like some of these hot takes may be a tad overblown, Isayama does weave in some uncomfortable themes which I have a hard time just dismissing away. Up-front, Attack on Titan appears to be staunchly anti-war – from the first volume you have soldiers haunted by the things they’ve seen, the comrades who have been devoured around them, desperate to feel like their sacrifices have any meaning to them (not to mention all of the horrific deaths we witness throughout the series). This would seem to paint war as something to be avoided at all costs, but as the story goes on I get the sense that that’s not really what Isayama is getting at – in Attack on Titan war is portrayed as a horrible thing that is necessary. After all, the while the narrative sympathizes with cadets who want to join the military police to stay as far away from titans as possible, they’re very clearly looked down upon in comparison to the survey corps who will lay down their lives for the good of humanity. Sure, they’re going to die in droves, often painfully and without even knowing their contribution to the betterment of humanity, but it is hammered home several times in the narrative that their sacrifices were not in vain.

In addition to this, war has to be led by great people who can make these sacrifices worthwhile. While there are hints of this early on, it’s stated outright by Armin when Erwin sacrifices dozens of survey corps members to lure out the Female Titan:

“The commander my be a cruel, even evil, man… but I… I think that’s good. Even if it puts his comrades’ lives in danger, he has to envision every possible development and make a choice. Between the lives of 100 of us and those of humanity, behind the walls. […] The people capable of changing things are the ones who can throw away everything dear to them. When forced to face down monsters they can even leave behind their humanity. Someone who can’t throw anything away will never be able to change anything.”

As if that wasn’t enough, Erwin Smith is viewed as the best hope for humanity’s future and there’s a whole chapter that revolves around how the previous commander of the survey corps admitted that “Average men aren’t able to accomplish anything. […] Special people do exist. It’s just that I wasn’t one of them. But I had to lead so many of my comrades to their deaths before I was able to figure that out.” We get a few of these “great men” in the story, most of whom are active military leaders, including Commander Pixis (who is based off of an Imperial Japanese general who Isayama admires). They are contrasted by the weak, selfish elites of Paradis who contribute nothing to society and who are shown to always put their comfort and power above any efforts to better humanity. This comes to a head when Eren’s titan powers are discovered and he is arrested and brought to trial. The elites want him to be killed because his existence threatens their seat of power, while the survey corps want to utilize him as a weapon to retake Wall Maria and save humanity. During the middle-section of the story (particularly during the coup arc), the elites and their cronies do everything they can to stifle the efforts of the survey corps up to and including going to outright war with them when they feel that their threat to their stability is too great. Again, this is the sort of thing that seems anti-authoritarian on the surface – they are, after all, trying to take down this corrupt regime. However, the resulting military coup and emphasis on these “heroes” who should be trusted above all others to reshape society puts that into question. I found the discussion on this Reddit thread about whether Attack on Titan is fascist to be particularly interesting and worth reading for more perspectives on this topic.

Another contentious aspect of Attack on Titan is the way it co-opts Jewish imagery and history in questionable ways. The most glaringly obvious of these is that the Eldians living in Marley are all hated by society, confined to ghettos and forced to wear armbands to identify their race. The parallels are evident, which makes me question whether Isayama gave any thought to the implications that this would bring about. First of all, every Eldian has the capacity to turn into a titan, lending credence to the notion that Jews are secretly monsters and suspicion or hate of them is in some way justified. Furthermore, the Eldians once ruled the world and are accused of committing atrocities around the globe centuries ago, harkening to the anti-Semitic ideas of nefarious Jews ruling the world. Hannah Collins, herself of Jewish descent, describes why this is so problematic within the narrative:

Anti-Semitism, like any form of predjudice, is based in fear, which has no logical root. By making Eldians former conquerors and genetic ‘freaks’ of nature, Isayama provides a plausible rationality to something that should have none. He didn’t have to make Eldians analogous to Jews for us to understand them as victims, and I – like many others – would have felt far more comfortable if he didn’t, to be honest.

It’s the same issue we’ve seen time and time again where racial and political imagery are co-opted in a narrative (Bright and Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad being recent examples of how crass and offensive this can be). At best, Isayama didn’t consider how making Eldians obviously analogous to Jews would lead to some questionable implications. At worst, it belies a racist worldview, which brings me to my next criticism…

Isayama seems to be obsessed with bloodlines in Attack on Titan. Race is, in the real world, largely a social construct, but in Attack on Titan it’s about as “real” as you can get. As I have already said, the ability to turn into a titan is a genetic trait of the Eldian race, but not only that but all Eldians have the ability to have their bodies and minds altered by the royal bloodline. This, of course, adds a whole other hierarchy to these bloodlines, since the royal bloodline possess special powers that are unique to them alone. As I previously mentioned, the fact that Mikasa is Asian is also a weird plotline in Attack on Titan. It’s revealed that non-Eldians were hunted down in Paradis since they are immune to the royal family’s memory-altering powers so the fact that Mikasa is Asian is made out to be a big deal that makes her special. In addition, her status as a member of the Ackerman family also provides her with the genetically inherited ability to be a really fuckin’ good fighter… again, it’s not because she’s just a badass or talented, it’s because of her stupid bloodline. Hell, Eren reveals that Mikasa doesn’t even really love him, she’s just genetically predisposed to protect them due to her bloodline (that said, the truth of this statement is left ambiguous and I personally believe he was lying). All this obsession with bloodline is weird and, in my opinion, narratively lazy on its own, but add it up with the co-opting of Jewish history and the imperialist themes and it becomes harder to believe that Attack on Titan isn’t promoting a pro-fascist worldview (and that’s not even getting into the ending, which promotes genocide as the only way to protect your loved ones).

Well If You’re So Smart, How Would You Fix It, HUH?

There really is a lot to like in Attack on Titan – as I said in the intro, I greedily devoured every volume of the manga I could get my hands on because it was such a compelling read that any complaints I had were excusable until chapter 100 came along. There are a lot of things to love up until that point – engaging and compelling plot progression, well thought-out world-building, fantastic art that conveys the sheer speed and force of the setting, and a handful of outstanding characters. I even really like the big twist about the world outside Paradis, but it has to be said that this reveal represents a fundamental shift in the narrative with little direction on where things will go next. As a result of the open-ended nature of this moment, it’s hard to make any substantial changes without having to just write the whole ending out yourself. That said, I do have two scenarios where I would diverge the narrative and make Attack on Titan into a whole other beast.

First of all, the obvious – change chapter 100. I hate the entire notion of Eren becoming a terrorist and bringing the wrath of Marley down on the people of Paradis (not to mention the subsequent stupid twist with Zeke, the Yeagerists, Rumbling, etc). It only really happens because of Isayama’s cynical worldview, but it rings false to me. Eren and the survey corps have spent the last hundred chapters talking about how they’re trying to save humanity, so when he finds out that humanity is doing fine he just… decides that the people of Paradis are the only actual people who matter so time to flatten the rest of them? Again, I don’t like this villainous turn, it doesn’t make sense to me. So here’s my suggestion for an alternate post-chapter 99 – focus the narrative on war between Marley and Paradis, while the characters try to break the mental trauma of the Eldians living in Marley.

The second place where I would consider diverting the narrative is that Eren should have stayed dead. That first battle with the survey corps was almost brilliant. Having Eren’s boring-ass protagonist schtick end up being a red-herring as he is brutally killed in his very first battle would have been incredible and would have given Armin and Mikasa someone to be inspired by throughout the rest of the narrative. Obviously, this would be a HUGE diversion as it would also take with it the whole idea of titan powers (and we wouldn’t get four or five variations of “oh my God, so-and-so is also a titan!”), the world outside the wall, coups, etc, but it would focus Attack on Titan back to the simplicity of its premise – the bleakness of its world and the actual titan fighting. It doesn’t take too long for Attack on Titan to lose track of the regular titans and instead become more interested in the politicking or special titans, to the point where they barely matter after the first dozen volumes. This change would scale everything back and make for a far more simple narrative centered around that initial premise of the last of humanity killing titans. It would be far more simple, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing and could be far more satisfying in the end. At the very least, it would have been interesting to see how Attack on Titan could have turned out if it didn’t get immediately bogged down with typical anime bullshit.

I think that what’s so frustrating about Attack on Titan is that it has left itself effectively unsalvageable. Like, look at it this way – The Rise of Skywalker sucks but at least The Last Jedi is a good enough open-ended, cyclical conclusion that you can happily ignore it. You can’t really do that with Attack on Titan – the whole early narrative revolves around getting to Eren’s basement and once you get there and find out about the wider world you can’t really end there – it begs for a conclusion and unfortunately the one we got was bullshit. If we’re being honest, I still liked the first two thirds of Attack on Titan enough that I’d probably still recommend reading it, but goddamn you need to go in knowing that the ending is really fuckin’ bad.

Death Note is Kind of Trash

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

I wasn’t really into anime when I was growing up. I watched localized successes like Sailor Moon, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! and checked out an issue of Shonen Jump once, but in general I was turned off of anime and manga by obsessive weebs. However, in the last few years I’ve been trying to get more cultured and have been checking out some of the big names in anime. One of these big names that I was sure I would like is Death Note. I mean, the whole premise it’s right up my alley: a notebook which kills anyone whose name is written in it? A cat and mouse game between the holder of the book and the detective hunting him down? A creepy demon monster following the protagonist around? Sign me the hell up. Hell, I was so certain that I was going to enjoy Death Note that I picked up the Blu-Ray set so I could enjoy it all at my leisure. I don’t tend to buy Blu-Rays blindly, but when I do it tends to work out splendidly for me (see: John Wick, The Raid, The Conjuring, etc). It has probably been two years since then and over the course of a few days I finally decided to sit down and watch Death Note in its entirety.

…and it kind of sucks. Like, I kind of want to just give away my Blu-Ray copy now, I disliked it that much.

It’s actually was surprising for me. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Death Note, some people going so far as to say that it’s one of the absolute best animes, so figured it would be a slam-dunk for me. Don’t get me wrong – the first 10ish episodes are quite enthralling as Light learns how to use the Death Note, L tries to discover Kira’s identity, and Light tries (poorly) to cover his tracks. However, it quickly starts to go down hill with only occasional moments of excitement. Hell, my disappointment was so surprising to me that I had to look up other reactions to the series to see if I was totally alone in my assessment. From what I’ve seen, most fans of Death Note will admit that the series drops in quality around episode 25 (some even agreed with me, that around episodes 10-15, the series’ quality definitely begins to decline). Considering that Death Note is a 37 episode-long anime, even if you think it’s good overall it seems like the popular opinion is that ~1/3 of the series is not great. And, if you agree with me that the series drops off quickly, it’s closer to 2/3 of the episodes being pretty shitty. Again, considering this has a good reputation, I feel like I need to explain exactly why I disliked it so much. And, in case it isn’t obvious, spoilers incoming.

First of all, let’s talk about those first 10 episodes that I did like and why they worked well. The premise of Death Note is fascinating – Light Yagami finds a notebook which will kill anyone whose name is written in it. The rules of the Death Note are also quite intricate and restrictive, crafting plenty of tension throughout the narrative (particularly the detail that the user can sell half of their remaining lifetime in order to see their prospective targets’ real names). This set-up naturally causes the viewer to think about what they would do if they had the Death Note and how they would use it. It also helps to make Light interesting because he has a very particular way that he intends to use the note to make a statement as “Kira”, the self-proclaimed god of justice, while also coming up with clever precautions to avoid ever being caught with the book. However, when the detective L enters the picture, the ease with which he is able to quickly narrow down the scope of the investigation is fascinating, largely because of the way it is written. L’s deductions in this early part of the series are based on clear evidence, and it’s easy to see how L could come to the conclusions he does – he’s just noticing details that other people would easily overlook. Furthermore, his hunches and evidence are often confirmed because of mistakes that Light makes. This makes for a thrilling cat-and-mouse game in the early episodes, as L tries to narrow down his list of Kira suspects, while Light desperately tries to cover his tracks and tie up any loose ends.

This tension begins to break around the time when L decides to confirm his suspicions and confront Light in-person. While at first this is interesting, and in order to keep the plot going it was kind of inevitable, the narrative really starts to slow down and become far less interesting at this point. It turns out that Light and L just aren’t very interesting characters in their own right. Their opposed philosophies are interesting to see clash, but when they have to interact with one another we see that there isn’t a lot to either of them. Even worse, their interactions are painfully repetitive – we see the same kind of scenes of L putting Light into a loaded situation, and then having Light debate about how best to respond without putting suspicion on himself, over and over and over. These moments also solidify that Light isn’t nearly as smart as the show wants us to believe. Sure, he’s clever, but waaaay too clever for his own good. Instead of trying to counter L head-on and remain as aloof as possible, if he’d just consistently act naturally and stop trying to thwart the surveillance on him, he wouldn’t be drawing suspicion on himself. Hell, the fact that he has FBI agents killed after they spy on him was just an idiotic move – it makes it obvious that Kira was indeed one of the people being watched, narrowing down the suspect list significantly. They suspected that Kira had access to police records, but why not deflect that suspicion, rather than confirm it? For that matter, why doesn’t Light engineer scenarios to deflect suspicion onto other people? All that Light ever does is thwart L enough that he can’t definitively say that Light is Kira, which just makes him look even more suspicious when it happens over and over again.

The slowing of the tension is bad enough but it’s around this same time when Death Note really starts to go down hill with the introduction of Misa Amane. In theory, the introduction of Misa could have been brilliant – most importantly, she has a second Death Note, which opens up the potential scale of the narrative immensely. Furthermore, she’s a Kira copycat who wants to meet Light, the shinigami Rem is in love with her, and she’s made the shinigami eyes deal so she can see peoples’ real names. Unfortunately, the writers of Death Note haaaaate her and her introduction has very little actual bearing on moving the plot forward. Misa is portrayed as being a complete idiot who is a constant burden and liability for Light. She’s completely devoted to Light, insisting that they should be a couple and does whatever he tells her to, despite the obvious fact that he doesn’t care about her at all. She’s also a professional model, which seems to have been done for little more reason than to make her seem more desirable for Light, to justify how she can be dumb and successful and to have the characters fawn over her. The thing is, the show tells us that Misa is an idiot, but I didn’t always believe that she was. She actually manages to outmanoeuvre Light and the police on occasion, in part because they underestimate her, which made me wonder if we are meant to think that she was actually far more clever than people give her credit for… but no, these moments are few and far between, and whenever they do happen, they are almost immediately followed-up by something that shows that they really do think she’s a complete moron.

I will give the show some credit, Death Note mostly shirks away from the ridiculous levels of fan service which are so common in anime. However, it’s not like you can’t have fan service and well-written female characters at the same time, and in Death Note the female characters are written horrendously. There’s the aforementioned Misa, who is literally treated as an expendable pawn by Light. She spends the entire series unwaveringly devoted to Light, never realizing that he’s manipulating her, even when he cheats on her (instead, she gets jealous and takes out her frustrations on the other woman). It would be one thing if the narrative made it obvious that the way Light treats Misa is awful, kind of like how it clearly disproves of his use of the Death Note. However, it never makes any sort of commentary on their abusive relationship, and the fact that the narrative constantly reinforces that Misa is just a dumb person only good for manipulation is troubling, especially when it also reinforces that Light is brilliant despite the boneheaded mistakes he walks into.

Other than Misa, there are a handful of female characters with any sort of importance to the narrative. First of all is Sayu, Light’s sister. She appears very briefly as a young girl during the first few episodes, but when she suddenly appears grown up later in the series it seems like she might be getting a more prominent role going forward. How exciting! …except, no, you didn’t think that the writers would give a female character an important role, would you? No, they just wanted to remind us she exists and make her intriguing so that way they could have the mafia kidnap her, have her be traumatized to insanity and then be left broken as she disappears from the story for the rest of the series! Holy shit! The other prominent female character is the “other woman” that I mentioned earlier, Kiyomi Takada. She appears early on in the series as a love interest for Light and he actually seems to be legitimately interested in her too, unlike Misa. Later in the series, she returns and becomes Light’s new love interest and closest follower. However, she’s jealous of Light’s relationship with Misa, which causes her to confront Misa and argue about who most deserves Light’s affections (considering that this is probably the only scene in the series involving two female characters talking to one another, that’s a hard Bechdel fail). However, it turns out that Light has been playing Takada hard, because he uses his close relationship with her to get her to kill his enemies and then commit suicide in order to deflect suspicion off himself! That’s… brutal, holy crap. The narrative definitely does not condone this, but the fact that this is just another female character manipulated, abused and then written out is not a great sign. It’s a pattern which, even more than the goth aesthetics and morbid subject matter, makes Death Note feel like it was written by and for teenage edge lords, because it’s the only role which women are able to fit into apparently.

Now, to be fair, there are two female characters in Death Note that I would be remiss to neglect mentioning. One is Rem, a shinigami who loves Misa and who tries to protect her from Light’s Machiavellian scheming. She’s actually pretty interesting, but disappears for a large chunk of the story and is ultimately manipulated into committing murder-suicide by Light in order to protect Misa. Perhaps my favourite character in the whole series though is Naomi Misora, a former FBI agent whose fiance is killed by Kira. Misora is so interesting because she’s just a regular person who makes the obvious deduction that Light’s attempts to cover his tracks are suspicious, causing her to realize that he is likely Kira. I’d argue that the single best episode in the whole series revolves around Light chatting with Misora and desperately trying to figure out her real name so that he can kill her before she reports her knowledge to L. It’s such an intense episode and Misora’s character is just so well-written that when she is finally tricked into committing suicide, it’s heartbreaking. Again, this is yet another female character manipulated and violently written out of the narrative. It would probably be palatable if Misora and Rem were the only female characters treated this way, or if there were other female characters with some importance to the plot who got to play a role in the story, but as it is it’s pretty easy to accuse Death Note of being misogynist (or, at the very least, having poor representation for women).

While the female characters get treated the worst, pretty much every character is wasted in Death Note. When L dies, he gets replaced with Near, who is like a carbon copy L but with even less personality and screen time, and who seems to just know things because it’s more convenient for the writers than showing how he deduced it. He’s also harried by Mello, an angry teenager who wants to prove himself a better detective than Near… which he does by basically becoming a poorly-fleshed-out gangster. Then there’s Mikami, who gets a terrifyingly evil and fascinating introduction which suggests that he could become even more of a dangerous fanatic than Light himself, but the narrative completely loses interest in exploring his character almost immediately. Most crucially, I didn’t even find Light or L particularly compelling. Like I said earlier, their philosophies are far more interesting than the characters’ actual personalities, which never really change substantially unless the writers force them to. Hell, I was calling bullshit when Light loses his memories of the Death Note and suddenly is fighting to stop Kira – he simply lost his memory of the book, are you telling me that he no longer agrees with his own philosophies and thinks that Kira is doing good? That was a bit of narrative convenience which did not make sense and was clearly just done to force Light and L to work together (again, revealing how little personality the pair have together for several episodes).

On a similar vein, there is so much wasted narrative potential in Death Note. It would have been so easy to deflect the perception of misogyny in the series with some more clever writing. For example, take Misa Amane: the narrative really runs out of things for Misa to do about 20 episodes in, meaning that she spends about half of the series doing absolutely nothing, because they wouldn’t just let her character grow or change any. Would it have been so bad for her to realize that Light was manipulating her and then throw his plans into disarray? It would have been way more engaging than having Light go head-to-head with Near, which just comes across as a boring retread of his relationship with L. Or what about Misa’s shinigami eyes? She ends up taking the deal twice, quartering her total lifespan. You’d think that this would have some sort of big narrative consequence, like suddenly dying at an inopportune moment when Light really needs her… but, nope, she makes the deal and it literally never comes up again. Hell, the elaborate uses of the Death Note aren’t really explored all that much. Early on we get some clever ways to use the Death Note, such as when Light tricks Raye Penber into killing himself and the FBI agents, or when he kills criminals every hour for 24 hours to send a message to L. However, the series very quickly moves away from exploring the Death Note, shunting it to the background in favour of trying to deduce Kira’s identity while we’re told killings are continuing. Perhaps the most clever idea here is that Light plants fake rules in the Death Note to confuse investigators and throw them off his scent, but this also just means that the Death Note itself goes missing for several episodes while the body count rises uneventfully. Even later on when Light takes on an even more extreme disciple, Teru Mikami, he is only concerned with writing as many names as possible, rather than dealing out sadistic punishments for them.

Hell, even ignoring all the wasted narrative potential, the narrative we get itself is just underwhelming. After those first ten episodes, here are maybe three or four interesting plot points, stretched thin between a gulf of uninteresting filler plot. These moments are: the way that Light resumes his role as Kira after wiping his memory of the Death Note, L’s death, the death of Light’s father, and Light’s brutal betrayal of Kiyomi Takada. Again, that’s four interesting moments spread out over the course of the last 27 episodes of the series, which is just way too much filler in-between. Hell, I didn’t even care for the ending all that much either. By the ending, Light’s convoluted plans have just gotten ridiculous, so it might have been fitting for him to be brought down by something deceptively simple, or to assume he had control of the situation and implicate himself. I mean, he practically announces that he’s Kira to the police when he believes that Mikami is on the other side of the door, so if the police had intercepted Mikami prior to this moment and even replaced him with an imposter, Light would have screwed himself over due to his arrogance. Instead, Light is foiled because it turns out that his new rival, Near, is even more of a convoluted thinker. While it is kind of nice to see Light visibly devolve into a whining brat at the end, the way that they brought it about was just lazy, in my opinion. By ending it this way the writers just confirm that they really do believe that Light is as smart as he thinks he is, but Near’s just smarter, so he’s the only one who could actually bring down Kira. Considering that Naomi Misora nearly had him dead-to-rights only a few episodes in, this clearly should not have been the conclusion we’re meant to draw from the narrative.

This also brings me to a weird aspect of the story. Light declares early in the series that he’s going to use the Death Note to bring justice to the world and establish himself as its new god. It’s a dark goal, but you could see it for a chaotic good character. However, he then quickly uses it to kill people who oppose him, including a criminal who he thought was L and the FBI agents who are observing him, revealing that he is an egotistical hypocrite who believes he’s solely qualified to decide what is just. As a result, you’d think that L and the police would then be the moral foil to this idea, pitting the law against Kira’s sense of justice. However, maybe I just don’t know Japanese law, but L uses some extremely shady, extra-judicial means to try to prove his case. First, he puts several cameras and microphones all through the Yagami house, including the bedrooms (this also results in spying on Light’s mother and little sister). Later he arrests Misa, blindfolds her and then isolates her so that she can’t have access to anyone (including a lawyer) for more than a month, effectively torturing her in order to get a confession. He does the same with Light, although at least in Light’s case he volunteered to be put through this torture first, so… that makes it okay, I guess? (Hell, the fact that he’s so desperate to prove his innocence that he’s willing to be put through torture is a pretty big red flag that Light has something to hide.) Oh, and then when they have absolutely nothing to go on, L bluffs that he’s going to execute Light and Misa, then allows Light’s father to kidnap them both and then threaten to commit murder-suicide in a last desperate bid to get a confession! HOLY SHIT!!! Yeah… so, again, I don’t know Japanese law, but I’m pretty sure that at least some of that is straight-up illegal, which goes against the whole concept of a moral and ethical high ground that the police have in this universe. Instead, it just turns into Kira’s justice versus L’s nebulous justice, with the police stuck working with the one who claims to be on their side.

So, as you can see, I really did not like Death Note. It’s a great premise which is squandered on poor execution, and I don’t understand how people can be so forgiving of it. I mean, just take a look at Code Geass: it’s clearly inspired by Death Note, taking a similar premise, structure and tone, but it follows-through on the narrative potential far better. This is primarily because the writing and characters are so much stronger… so I guess what I’m saying is that you should watch Code Geass instead because Death Note is kind of trash.