u/Tainted_Scholar

With the Wild era's massive focus on climbing and other forms of vertical movement (Revali's Gale, gliding from high places, Ascend, springs, rockets, etc.), they would have been the perfect games to feature a true Shadow of the Colossus-style boss fight.

For those unfamiliar with Shadow of the Colossus, it is a game where you slay giant creatures by climbing up their bodies to reach weak points and stabbing them. The Colossi in the game are enormous, with all but three being over 50 feet tall and some getting way bigger.

Obviously, climbing a giant monster to kill it is awesome. And it's such a shame to me that neither BotW or TotK truly did something like this.

The games got close at times, with bosses such as the Taluses, Flux Constructs, or even Marble Goham, but they were all too small. The Demon Dragon is certainly big enough and even resembles the Thirteenth Colossus in a lot of ways, but most of the fight is just riding on the Light Dragon and skydiving down onto its weak points, with very little actual time spent on the Demon Dragon's body.

I WANT TO FUCKING FIGHT A GODLIKE BEING IN AN EPIC BATTLE FOR THE FATE OF THE WORLD! I CAN GO TO ALMOST ANY OTHER GENRE IF I WANT THE VILLAIN TO BE JUST SOME GUY! NO OTHER GENRE CONSISTANTLY GIVES ME THIS KIND OF SCOPE FOR ITS FINAL BATTLE! JUST BECAUSE IT'S "CLICHE" DOESN'T MEAN IT'S NOT FUCKING AWESOME!

I've been trying to figure out what, exactly, Heart Containers and Pieces of Hearts are in lore. For awhile, I was unsure if they even existed in universe or if they were just a gameplay thing, but I ultimately determined that they do indeed exist in the lore of the series, and they seem to be magical stones.

In Oracle of Seasons, a shopkeeper in Subrosia sells you a Piece of Heart, but he misidentifies it as a "Rare Peach Stone" due to it being upside down. This interaction is particularly notable to me, since not only does it tell us that Pieces of Heart are made of stone, but it also further reinforces the idea that Pieces of Heart are physical objects that exist in the world, because while other shops in the series have sold them before, none of the shopkeepers have actually interacted with the objects to the degree of incorrectly turning one upside down.

The idea of Heart Containers being made of stone is further reinforced by Minish Cap. During the Picori Festival, Zelda wins a raffle and one of the prizes is a Heart Container which the vendor refers to as a "heart-shaped stone". Once again being an instance of a character interacting with the object beyond simply handing it to Link as a reward.

Another thing that I find super interesting is that these NPCs don't seem to understand the power these objects hold. They only refer to them as being rare and beautiful, with no mention to their life granting properties. And, furthermore, these seem to be the only instances of NPCs actually giving any insight into Heart Containers that I can find in the series.

Which leads me to believe that most people cannot use Heart Containers to enhance their life energy like Link does. And this leads me to my speculation on their origins. I believe that the Heart Containers are magical stones created by the Gods specifically for the chosen hero.

In Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, Link does not find his Heart Containers like he usually does. Instead, they are given to him directly by Hylia in exchange for offering her Spirit Orbs or Blessings of Light. This shows that Hylia can create Heart Containers for Link.

So, it is my belief that the various Heart Containers and Pieces of Hearts were created by gods like Hylia and scattered across Hyrule and other realms for Link to use, and only Link. Obviously, there are still some gameplay abstractions in here, like bosses dropping them after defeat, but I think this is a pretty good explanation for what Heart Containers are in lore and how they work.

So many villains have shot Superman with a Kryptonite bullet, but it shouldn't work! He is faster than a speeding bullet! He's been faster than a speeding bullet since before Kryptonite was invented. He should be able to just fucking dodge it.

By "direct sequel" I mean a game staring the same Link and Zelda from Spirit Tracks, similar to how Phantom Hourglass was a direct sequel to Wind Waker.

And by "distant sequel" I mean a game set around 100 years after Spirit Tracks with a new Link and Zelda, but still having strong connections to Spirit Tracks, similar to how Spirit Tracks itself was a distant sequel to Phantom Hourglass.

Treasure Planet and Atlantis are both lumped together as cult classic Disney animated films. They came out at around the same time, they both flopped, and they both have a strong cult following. As a result, the two films are always talked about in the same breath as underrated movies that deserved better than they got.

And I hate it, because Treasure Planet is a way better film.

Treasure Planet is, unironically, one of the best animated films Disney ever made. It's easily in the top 10, possibly top 5. The story is faithfully adapted from Treasure Planet, a classic and beloved novel, with only minor changes to make it work in film form. The characters are amazing, and it easily has the best depiction of the relationship between Jim and Silver out of any adaptation of Treasure Island. The only potential flaw this film has is its aesthetic, with some people being turned off by the weird 17th century mixed with space travel style, but that's not a problem for me in the slightest.

Meanwhile, Atlantis: The Lost Empire is a heavily flawed film. I wouldn't call it a bad movie, but it's far from great. The plot is clunky. Watching it for the first time, I could see the scissor-marks in the film where stuff was changed between drafts. Most notably, the healing properties of the crystals are set up like a Chekov's gun, and then never actually used. And the characters are all rather one note without much in the way of depth.

I know it's petty of me, but it bothers me every time I see these two films lumped together, because I feel like Treasure Planet is just so much better than Atlantis.

Spider-Man's web-shooters are activated with buttons on the palm, near the wrist that he presses with his middle and ring fingers. But such a button should get pushed by accident whenever he has to catch a steel beam or wrestle the Rhino. Do the webshooters have some kind of 'safety' to keep them from going off by accident, or is it just skill and practice on Spidey's part that prevents accidental web discharge?

The Dominion Rod is criminally underused, everyone knows this, but probably the most obvious case where it could have been used but wasn't is in the City in the Sky. After all, the Dominion Rod was literally created by Oocca, and the City in the Sky is the home of the Oocca, so you'd think it would be used at least once in that dungeon.

Batman is an inherently ridiculous concept. He is a billionaire who is also a genius detective and an expert martial artist who dresses up as a bat and runs around at night beating up criminals.

But he fits in with the rest of the setting. Batman comics aren't grounded and down to earth, they have giant werebats, a dude in a robot suit with a freeze ray, and a woman who can psychically control plants. If anything, Batman is one of the more grounded characters in his world. And this is without touching on the rest of the DC universe.

But ever since the Nolan trilogy, Batman films have been obsessed with being "gritty" and "realistic". Part of this comes from being dark and serious (no Batusi here), but a major part comes from removing any fantastical or sci-fi elements from the setting and characters.

Ra's is no longer a 900-year-old immortal, Joker doesn't have his Joker gas or have bleached skin, Bane isn't even allowed to use performance enhancing drugs anymore.

And The Batman (2022) goes even further than this. Even relatively mundane things like the Batcave are deemed "too comic book" and exorcised. But more notably, just about every character has lost their iconic looks in the name of realism. Penguin doesn't have a top hat and umbrella, Riddler no longer has his green question mark suit and bowler hat, instead wearing a muted green trench coat and mask, and Catwoman can't have an actual cat mask and instead wears a normal ski mask.

All of them have lost their iconic costumes... Except for Batman. His look is too iconic to change too much, but it makes him stand out.

In this world of gritty crime lords and terrorists, where everything is as realistic as possible and everyone wears normal clothes, the dude with pointy ears on his mask and a cape feels ridiculous by comparison.

For comparison, take a dark, gritty, and realistic crime film, something like No Country For Old Men. Now imagine inserting a guy in a Power Rangers outfit who beats people up with kung fu. He would be completely out of place and clash horribly with the rest of the film. It doesn't matter if he doesn't have any fantastical powers or technology, from just visuals alone he wouldn't fit.

That is what Batman films are heading towards if this trend continues. Soon, Batman himself is going to be out of place in his own movies.

In the Jurassic Park universe, InGen fucked up royally and accidentally unleashed a T-Rex on San Diego. Papa Rex went on to eat some people, eat some dogs, and cause a fuck ton of property damage. Honestly, the fact that InGen was able to still exist as a company and open a new dinosaur park after that kind of stretches disbelief. But if they did survive that, they would absolutely want to do everything in their power to make people forget about it.

And that means axing the Tyrannosaurus.

Now, I know that T-Rex is one of, if not the most well known and popular dinosaurs ever. But all that InGen would see it as is a living reminder of their greatest and most public fuck up. They would absolutely try to push a different dinosaur to be the new "face" of dinos, perhaps Spinosaurus or Giganotosaurus . After all, there's no need to think about boring old T-Rex when we have even larger and scarier dinos to display. Hell, that was part of their reasoning behind the Indominus Rex.

Also, there's also a discussion to be had about how much the Jurassic Park films contributed to T-Rex's popularity, and those movies obviously don't exist in this universe.

Lastly, I also want to bring up this rant from a few days ago and add onto it.

https://old.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/comments/1t0yi3z/jurassic_world_is_designed_for_you_not_its_guests/

If the public's only real life exposure to dinosaurs was one fucking up a major American city and eating people, they would want to distance the dinos in the park from this as much as possible. So say goodbye to scaly dinosaurs and say hello to feathers.