@suquili I thought they were setting it up the the CEO guy was going to be Screenslaver, but instead of a shitty revenge plot, he set the events in motion to get supers unbanned and everyone wins: supers get to be super again and he made money helping them. The conflict would have been whether the ends justify the means as clearly creating the problems needed to justify unbanning supers is evil and how the characters deal with the moral dilemma. The new characters did suck, too.

@RegalBeagle that probably would've been better. it's been like 2 years since i rewatched it but i don't think i finished it. i think i WILL watch it now lol. but im not looking forward to the last half hour or so because i remember it just feeling like it derailed.

@suquili All the setup was there then the twist villain reveal fucked it all up and it sucked. I remember rolling my eyes in theaters when the actual villain explained her motives.

@suquili Hopefully the 3rd is good, but I'm not holding my breath. Disney is on a money burning spree, and I don't see any signs of them stopping.

@RegalBeagle i don't trust disney but i do trust brad bird from what i know about him, he'll prolly work within the boundaries as best he can. disney did shelf some overtly gay cartoon recently because of backlash so i have hope they're at least a little malleable. but yeah, nothing will ever capture how i felt being like 4 or 5 seeing the original in theaters. it was prolly my first movie i saw in theaters and god i was hooked instantly. i will never be as immersed in something as i was with that.

@suquili Bird's amazing and I can't help but think the mouse house kneecapped him. The twist villain had no setup, so the payoff was weak and her motivation was terrible. The current Disney zeitgeist is where creativity and quality go to die, so it's probably not his fault.

I actually just watched a mini doc on this topic. You may get a kick out of it, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-ceg-ppNo4

@RegalBeagle watched the sequel yesterday, then this video. i pretty much agree. it's a very weak movie held up largely by fanservice (e.g. frozone getting more screentime, repeated lines and motifs) but the overall story i just wasn't as invested. i thought maybe it was just that I've seen the first movie so many times i basically know it by heart, but i really think there's too much going on at once and it hinders my immersion. the flashy animation doesn't help either, feels harder to identify characters.

as for the art direction, it's fine with the main characters but all of the extras and minor characters (like the new superheros) look awful (and too diverse for a movie that is supposed to look like 60s America). the new superheros look like they belong in a Dreamworks movie lmao, it's bad. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see any of them in the next movie, except Voyd because her powers were cool.

overall the biggest problem is that it's shallow. it's got maybe 25% as much depth as the original had. in the first one, everyone went through some character arc, but this one it didn't even feel like our protagonist Elastigirl went through one. By the time she stopped that train, her initial skepticism about returning to hero work was completely gone. But she didn't seem all that skeptical about it at the end of the first movie, partially because the implication at the end was that superheros had been legalized again. Aside from there being a scene officially declaring superheros legal, the second movie ends almost exactly the same as the first one.

@suquili So much wasted potential. I can't wait for woke Hollywood to finish imploding so we can get good movies again.