Scream VI / Ranking the Scream Movies

We watched Scream VI last weekend. I thought it was pretty good; in fact, I’d say it’s my second favorite Scream movie.

My ranking would be:

1. Scream (1996)

2. Scream 6

3. Scream 2

4. Scream 5 – a.k.a. Scream (2022)

5. Scream 4

6. Scream 3

However, there’s still a huge gap between the original Scream and all the sequels. I like how each one carves out its own specialty – Scream makes fun of horror tropes, 2 makes fun of sequels, 3 makes fun of trilogies, and so on. But nothing beats the originality of the first one. It practically invented a new genre of self-aware horror.

It does drive me crazy how superhuman everyone is in the series, especially in the later installments. Nearly every survivor gets stabbed at some point, often in the stomach or chest area. It gets harder and harder to tell which characters have just suffered mortal wounds, and which ones are going to walk it off in a few minutes. 

Yes, humans in real life often survive injuries they shouldn't, but the reason those stories are so amazing is that they aren't very common. The Scream series would have you believe that one can build up an immunity to stab wounds.

Still, it's a fun series, and the newest one is one of the high points.

M3GAN

M3GAN is a fun movie, though it felt like I’d seen it before. The whole “A.I. takes its job too literally” trope is pretty common, but M3GAN is a standout just for its visuals. The title character is performed so well, that it makes me forget a lot of the other movies with similar plots. Unfortunately, the plot falls apart at the climax, when the movie stops following its own rules.

It seems like the writers just really wanted to show certain scenes, but couldn’t find a valid way to work them into the plot, so they just did it anyway. One line of dialogue could have fixed it. And maybe it did, and I just missed it. But if so, they needed to make it more obvious.

Somehow, Palpatine Has Returned

I'm so sick of “Somehow, Palpatine has returned” memes. It’s kind of a berserk button for me. It reminds me of how unpleasable Star Wars fandom has become. Palpatine’s resurrection is perfectly explained in the movie, but everyone quotes that one line from Poe as if that’s the movie’s only explanation. Of course Poe doesn’t know how Palpatine returned, why would he?

There’s a shot where the camera pans across some cloning tanks. With one shot they manage to answer two questions – it reveals that the new Palpatine is a clone, and that Snoke may have been a failed attempt to clone Palpatine. I mean, there's more to it than that – like, Palpatine’s force spirit was so powerful that it was able to possess his own clone – but please don’t tell me there was no explanation whatsoever.

People always tell writers that they should “Show, don’t tell.” Then this movie comes along and does exactly that… and everyone misses it. Stupid, toxic fans. Regardless of how you feel about the rest of RoS's pacing and exposition, the backlash against Palpatine's "unexplained" return is unwarranted.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3

The first two GotG movies are two of my favorite MCU films. GotG 3 is great, but it's not as laugh-a-minute as the first two. The animal cruelty and other seriousness means I probably won't rewatch it very often. I didn't like the soundtrack as much, either. 

I did love the villain, though. I also watched Quantumania this weekend, and I think the High Evolutionary is a much better villain than Kang.

Quantumania

I think the critics were a little hard on Quantumania. It's not a great movie, but then, none of the Ant-Man movies have been "great." It was no better or worse than the previous two films, though it is certainly different. Taking place almost entirely in the Quantum Realm, and therefore abandoning the comic relief characters from the previous movies, it's a bit of a tonal shift. It still has plenty of humor, but it doesn't feel like a flat-out comedy the way the first two did.

The movie is full of plot holes, or at least things that aren't explained as well as they should have been. There's several points where I wanted to ask, "Why don't they just..." and the writers may have even had a valid answer for these questions. One or two lines of dialogue would have saved lots of complaints. But oh well. It's a comic book movie with comic book science and comic book logic. You either buy into it or you don't.

Overall, it's a fun, if average, Marvel movie.

Blood Samples

 I've just published my fourth "book," though this one is just a collection of six short stories. It's called Blood Samples, and it's a prequel to my other books. It's also free on most e-retailers (99 cents on Amazon). You can get it here: Amazon  Other Stores

If you like it, please check out my other books here:

Xine Fury's Books

And if you haven't already, make sure you check out my writing blog:

Bloodhunters Blog