PaperThinWalls

I saw the movie last night, too. I didn’t like Halloween (2018) very much at all, so I went into this one with some reservations. Well, I watched the film and I came out with pretty much same feelings I had for H18 which I posted in this topic: The last part I would amend to just to “silly plot” cause I wouldn’t say the plot was all that busy with contrivances and whatnot — but everything else still applies here. I really do not like the filmmaking here. It may be more glossy-looking and its themes are more delicately, deliberately crafted than the sequels that preceded it but at its heart the filmmaking and many of the creative choices are not that different from its predecessors. These films don’t understand that one of the things that made the original so great is its minimalism. They always fall in same trapping of going bigger and they always stumble. When will they learn? If you truly want to be different, then go small and simple. The one thing I would say that Halloween Kills and H18 continue to do better than the previous sequels is its concept and characterization of Michael as The Shape. They understand the playful nature of him and that he isn’t simply a killing machine. There’s a perversity to the way he plays with his victims and their corpses. They also understand underlying uncanniness of him. That he’s a force of nature. A void. A blank slate with an unknownable motive. He’s a mystery. So they’re still doing pretty well there. I like it when Laurie One thing that I didn’t like in terms of Michael, though, is

I’m watching both WWE and AEW main shows and the Roman stuff overall is best thing going on between the two companies atm which at its best is… just enjoyable. Nothing groundbreaking just good enough to keep my interest. There’s been a lot of talk about how great wrestling is right now (which let’s be honest people really just mean AEW), but I ain’t seeing it. Almost everything across these two companies just feels shallow and empty. There’s been very little that feels truly meaningful or substantive to me. So I’m not going to disagree with Roman saying his shit is best stuff right now cause to me it probably is. But at the same time, it ain’t the greatest shit either. Wrestling (among these two promotions at least) is just very meh for me right now which is probably a pretty unpopular online opinion.

But this isn’t Dark, no? It’s the “Buy In.” And the reason they’re doing all of this because they’re trying to create buzz for these weekend shows as well as attract viewers away from their competitor (who are also doing their own things to create buzz). This is not the norm. This all came to be because of live sports.

Heyman is the best thing on SD.

Oh yeah, that made sense. Totally made sense.

So Toni’s gimmick is that she loves the ‘80s…

Real world came into play, but the response to that doesn’t necessarily have to entail a convenient plot-device to magically whisk him back to exactly where he was before. That’s good storytelling? That’s cheap and low-effort to me. If that happened in some other work that’s very plot-driven I’ll most likely scoff at that. It’s so cheap and shallow. Now I’ll grant you, the fans have accepted this just fine and AEW will still achieve what they wanted. But that still doesn’t make it good storytelling to me (nor do I think him running a 5-month gauntlet of stars is necessary either).

I don’t really consider coming up with a random gimmick match out-of-the-blue to get someone a title match great booking. Like you said, it’s convenient. If it was something more established like the RR or an annual tournament, ok. But a ladder match they threw on Dynamite with minimum build? That’s not satisfying storytelling to me. It’ll probably get them where they want to be quick and efficiently — I’m not going to deny that. However, I’m not to going applaud them either.

I wouldn’t want a dumb concept to be even dumber with more needless, arbitrary gimmick matches inserted into feuds that never called for such a thing anyway. It’s so backwards. It’s not even about draining people as you put it. It’s about if the feud naturally calls for it.

But they did deliver an Extreme Rules match. You think every match at HIAC should be in a HIAC? Or every match at War Games should be War Games? I agree, though. Get rid of the PPV. It's a terrible name and concept.

At that point in his run that's what he had been, though. He should have looked weak. He was gone for awhile due to two shoulder surgeries. Came back as a heel and lost a lot. Then he began working as a manager for Nakamura and Cesaro. Eventually got back in the ring but had to rely on his goons to get him wins (his IC win was a fantastic example of this). So it made sense that he was booked in that manner because he was in a weakened state and had been for some time. He shouldn't have been workrate Sami. That's not what the match called for. That's not what the feud called for. That's not who he was. He was a chickenshit and he excelled at that role, especially in that match. You don't need to have super competitive matches with tons of moves to have a good match. That's a bunch of bull to me. Maybe in Dave and many others' books. But not in my book. What he did in that match was exactly what he needed to do and then some. Same for Bryan. They played their roles exceptionally well and I applaud them for that.

The less overused gimmick matches, the better.

Becky Charlotte Liv Usos Priest Reigns

Yeah. I like Zayn being a dodgy weasel. He was a fantastic heel in that match. The mannerisms. The psychology. The heel tactics. It was story that engaged me and I thought the work from all those involved was stellar. They worked a great match even with the lack of fans. I don’t care what moves Zayn didn’t do. I care about him playing the role that was right for him for that match.

Some recent ones: Bryan/AJ IC tournament final from last year and the SD Bryan/Cole match were both better than Bryan/Omega. And I’d take Bryan/Zayn from WM over the Omega match. Are these matches “5 star worthy,” I don’t know but these matches were definitely better than Bryan/Omega for me which was not even close at being “5 stars.”