film.Antrikshy2024-02-17T21:15:52+00:00https://antrikshy.com/filmAntriksh Yadav2023 MCU Rewatch Diary - Phase Three2023-10-22T00:00:00+00:00https://antrikshy.com/film/2023-mcu-rewatch-diary-phase-three<p>Of the MCU’s first three Phases, the third one is not only the longest, but also the most ambitious by far.</p>
<p>Arguably, it’s more ambitious than Phases Four and Five. I say it’s arguable for a <em>very</em> specific reason. David Gauthier of the They’re Just Movies podcast once pointed out that the MCU doesn’t just make more movies per Phase; they push the boundaries of genre and style in their movies in each successive Phase. This forever changed how I view the MCU, because he was 100% right. Think about <em>Ant-Man</em> and <em>Guardians of the Galaxy</em> in Phase Two. Unfortunately, I don’t remember which of their MCU episodes they discussed this in. If I come across it again, I’ll link it here with a timestamp.</p>
<p>Anyway, this would imply that Phases Four and Five <em>must</em> be more experimental and ambitious. I can see arguments on both sides.</p>
<p>Marvel Studios are now making more and more streaming-exclusive content that is gradually weaving in and out of their feature films. They’re expanding their genres, tone, and casting beyond anything we’ve seen thus far. They’re leaning into the style of storytelling that radiates outwards from tentpole content, in every direction. Think teamups leading to spinoffs with narrower appeal, such as <em>Avengers: Endgame</em> to <em>Loki</em>. We’ve seen this type of storytelling before - not in mainstream cinema - but in comics. They don’t seem to be worried about alienating an audience they held captive, one that cared about every single new release. In exchange, they are trying to garner a more diverse audience with relatively niche interests. Compare: <em>She-Hulk</em>, <em>Black Panther: Wakanda Forever</em>, <em>Ms Marvel</em>, <em>Moon Knight</em>.</p>
<p>On the other hand, Phase Three’s sheer ambition and scale completely eclipses Phases One and Two by a huge margin. Building up a 10 year cinematic universe to such an incredible climax, actually pulling it off with broad cultural impact, <em>the first time</em>, makes it particularly commendable. I still see critic reviews and Reddit comments alike compare new MCU releases with <em>Infinity War</em> and <em>Endgame</em>, so many years after they released. In a way, the ambition and sheer success of Phase Three’s climax may have set the bar way too high for Marvel Studios themselves to compete with.</p>
2023 MCU Rewatch Diary - Phase Two2023-05-14T00:00:00+00:00https://antrikshy.com/film/2023-mcu-rewatch-diary-phase-two<p>Some of Phase Two deals with the fallout of <em>The Avengers</em>. Obviously due to budget reasons, there’s a focus on solo adventures once again, but with plenty of references implying the Avengers’ existence off-screen.</p>
<p>Popular opinion seems to be that Phases Four and Five (ongoing at the time of this writing) feel directionless. If you ask me, this isn’t new. Phase Two has solo adventures tugging at the shared story in all directions. Minor tone and character motivation inconsistencies creep in and start wearing down the verisimilitude of the universe (more on this later).</p>
<p>However, I’ll concede that the tight focus on a small, core set of characters makes the chaos <em>feel</em> much more purposeful than the broad focus on new character introductions in Phases Four and Five.</p>
2023 MCU Rewatch Diary - Phase One2023-03-13T00:00:00+00:00https://antrikshy.com/film/2023-mcu-rewatch-diary-phase-one<p>Phase One turned out a lot more enjoyable than I expected, viewing from a post-Endgame, 2020s lens.</p>
<p>These are genuinely fun movies, with some solid writing, and a lot more interconnections than early-to-mid-teens-unaware-of-the-MCU-me could have possibly noticed. I guess Marvel Studios were pretty confident, pretty early on, and started sowing the seeds for an interconnected universe right from the first couple of movies.</p>
2023 MCU Rewatch Diary - Introduction2023-03-13T00:00:00+00:00https://antrikshy.com/film/2023-mcu-rewatch-diary-introduction<p>This is the first in a series of posts documenting my first rewatch of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, Phases One to Three; starting at <em>Iron Man (2008)</em> and ending at <em>Avengers: Endgame (2019)</em>.</p>
<p>I’ve been watching them since way back, but I only recognized Marvel Studios’ long-term aspirations around 2013. That’s when I started following the series in earnest. I’m usually not one to rewatch stuff, so I haven’t watched most of these titles more than once. For many of them, the initial theater experience is the only memory I have.</p>
Analyzing A Decade's Worth Of My Movie Ratings2022-05-30T00:00:00+00:00https://antrikshy.com/film/analyzing-a-decades-worth-of-my-movie-ratings<p>As we <a href="/film/introducing-antrikshs-film-blog">have established</a>, I have rated over a thousand movies on IMDb thus far. At the time of this writing, it’s a treasure trove of data over a decade in the making. I’ve had many ideas to find interesting patterns in it.</p>
<p>I decided to poke and prod at an exported copy. IMDb’s CSV export includes basic data about each title - the IMDb user rating, release date etc. To get the real juicy info, I had to cross-reference it with full IMDb datasets. I finally had an excuse to put my <a href="https://github.com/Antrikshy/Rackfocus">Rackfocus</a> project to good use. It’s a little Python command line utility (install using <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">pip install rackfocus</code>) to pull freely available IMDb datasets and organize them into convenient SQLite tables.</p>
<p>Here are some interesting finds from my own ratings. If you too have a trove of ratings on IMDb and want to run these (and more) analyses yourself, skip to the end for instructions.</p>
On Thor's Lifespan2021-02-26T00:00:00+00:00https://antrikshy.com/film/on-thors-lifespan<p>As the Marvel Cinematic Universe chugs along building an increasingly complex story comprising of episodic movies and dozens of seasons’ worth of TV series, I often find myself nitpicking some of the littler details in the franchise. This is a big compliment, by the way. The fact that the fandom, including myself, frequently discusses these things goes to say how air tight (though not 100%) and entertaining the continuity has been so far.</p>
<p>One of those nitpicks has to do with the way characters with very long lifespans are portrayed in the MCU, and generally in fiction.</p>
Alien: Isolation - Distant Sequel Perfection2020-12-03T00:00:00+00:00https://antrikshy.com/film/alien-isolation-distant-sequel<p>Earlier this year, I played through <em>Alien: Isolation</em>, a very well regarded horror game set in the universe originally created for the Alien film franchise. Horror isn’t my favorite genre, so I had mixed feelings about the experience as I was playing through it. Looking back, I have some very good things to say about it, but in a different context.</p>
<p>Important context: I played this game on the second-hardest difficulty level. I get the feeling that difficulty levels in <em>Alien: Isolation</em> change the gameplay experience quite a bit.</p>
<p><strong>This post is spoiler-free.</strong></p>
The Complex Nature Of Film Ratings2020-08-31T00:00:00+00:00https://antrikshy.com/film/the-complex-nature-of-film-ratings<p>Movie ratings are complicated.</p>
<p>Is <em>The Shawshank Redemption</em> better than <em>Inception</em>? At the time of writing, that’s what their respective IMDb user ratings suggest. The former ranks #1 on IMDb’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/chart/top">top film charts</a> (and has been for years), while the latter is a bit lower down, but squarely in the top 20.</p>
<p>How exactly does <em>Crazy, Stupid, Love</em> compare? Is it wrong to enjoy or appreciate the three in a different ranking?</p>
<p>Can movies be objectively good or bad, or better and worse than each other?</p>
Introducing Antriksh's (Film) Blog2020-07-12T00:00:00+00:00https://antrikshy.com/film/introducing-antrikshs-film-blog<p>In the last 8 or so years, I have watched and rated at least 1001 films* on IMDb. This covers all my movie-viewing experience to date since about the age of 16, maybe 17. In this time, the thought of writing down movie reviews, perhaps loose thoughts… <em>something</em>, has crossed my mind more than once. Usually, my internal counter argument was that it was too late to start now, that it would always feel somehow incomplete <em>not</em> having a written record of all these years.</p>
<p>Oh well. Hindsight is 20/20. I have grown to enjoy writing more than I ever have, over the last couple of years. And I figured 1001-movies-rated milestone was as good a time as any to embark on this journey.</p>
<p>My other concern was all this becoming a chore. That’s still a concern, honestly. And I’ll need to plan around it. I’ll try my best to pick and choose topics that don’t force me into a schedule, and I should be fine.</p>
<p>I’m getting into this without a solid plan. But at the moment, I feel confident about two things:</p>
<ol>
<li>This will be a collection of essays.</li>
<li>Proper movie reviews will likely be uncommon.</li>
</ol>
<p>At the time of this writing, I have genuinely just finished watching (and rating) 1001 movie titles on IMDb, but because I am unsure how far this will go, I am unlikely to publish this until I have at least one or two essays ready to go.</p>
<p><strong>Just to etch this in stone somewhere:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Film 997:</strong> Frozen II<br />
<strong>Film 998:</strong> Onward<br />
<strong>Film 999:</strong> Toy Story 4<br />
<strong>Film 1000:</strong> 2001: A Space Odyssey<br />
<strong>Film 1001:</strong> Hamilton</p>
<p><small>* Feature films. Except any I may have genuinely forgotten to rate, but there are likely only a handful of those.</small></p>