“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” This is not Michael Corleone talking. This is me talking. I wasn’t planning on making a post this early, and I definitely wasn’t planning on making a post about the films that have come out in theaters recently. The post that I was going to make first was going to be about the future of the USA because this is what the Americans that follow my blog want to know about. Americans are known for being selfish and self-centered. Therefore, most of them are only interested in knowing about what’s happening to them and around them. They have no idea, and they’re not interested in, what’s going on in the world. When it comes to what’s going on in the world, they simply believe what the American authorities tell them to believe. In this way, they’re just like the people in other countries. Americans also make up the largest demographic among the followers of my blog. Well, there are over 300 million of them, after all. I’ve already made at least one post about what will happen in the USA in the future. But I can make another, more detailed post, as well as adding other information. However, worrying about what my followers think and want has never been a thing of mine. Recently, someone called me a bigot on the internet. It seems that some people are offended by my bad, right-wing jokes. Well, I guess that I have been on a minor campaign of bigotry for a while. I don’t have to make jokes, but sometimes I can’t help it because seeing how some people react to them is quite amusing. Moreover, some of the most active people that follow my blog are controlled opposition figures, assets, influencers, and propagandists. They’re people like Alex Jones, Jeff Rense, Webster Tarpley, Paul Joseph Watson, or Patrick Henningsen. One of my followers informed me about these right-wingers. I didn’t know about some of them and the many other controlled opposition figures that follow my blog because I don’t listen to them or search for them on the internet. I was hoping that these people would stop following my blog, but it seems that no amount of bad jokes can turn them away. Well, this isn’t a big deal, but I still managed to lose some followers because of my bad jokes, and this is just fine with me. Pleasing people is not what I’m into because my channel and my blog don’t bring me any income. By the way, Alex Jones has become a pro at knowing what his followers want to see and hear. He has a new look now because he’s older, and his act nowadays is that of an older angry white man because pretty much all of the people that listen to him are badly informed white reactionaries and right-wingers that are dissatisfied with the state of affairs in the USA. Anyway, since the bought and paid for film critics have been at it again, I can no longer look away. Well, they’re always at it because this is what they get paid to do. I can’t, however, ignore their ramblings this time. For now, I will overlook the fact that Rich Evans is an American treasure and instead focus on what the bought and paid for film critics have been saying about Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Some of them have said that Top Gun: Maverick is better than Top Gun (1986). I can’t let this slide. Initially, I wasn’t going to see Top Gun: Maverick or any other new film in a theater. I got to see Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), and this was enough for me. Since I like this film, I saw it again on home video. This time I had time to notice the other good performances in the film, aside from those by the main cast. Only Xochitl Gomez delivered a faulty performance, but she’s still only 16 years old. I like how Chiwetel Ejiofor acted in the film, particularly in the scene set in the New York Sanctum, after Karl Mordo meets Stephen Strange and America Chavez. Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, and Rachel McAdams are experienced actors, but their performances in the film are probably as good as they are because Sam Raimi was the director. Anyway, it so happened that I got to see Top Gun: Maverick because I was near a theater when I decided to see it. I went to the center of the city in order to see my sister, but she wasn’t home. Therefore, since I didn’t have anything else to do in the center of the city at that time, and since I had to go to the washroom, I went to the nearest theater, where I then got to see the film. Finding a public washroom, especially one in the center of the city, has been quite a problem ever since the COVID-19 mandates got introduced. Although the mandates have been abolished for the time being, it’s still not easy to find a working public washroom or an open public washroom. Life hasn’t exactly returned to normal. Just about every place that you can go to still closes at 9 p.m. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting to be disappointed by Top Gun: Maverick because Tom Cruise has an impressive filmography. Even most of the films that he has starred in in the last decade or two are watchable. Few of them have replay value but I will point out that I enjoyed seeing Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Knight and Day (2010), Tropic Thunder (2008), and the Mission Impossible films. In my opinion, Minority Report (2002) is one of the best films of the last two decades and it definitely has replay value. Still, I wasn’t expecting to be impressed by Top Gun: Maverick. After seeing it, I can say that it’s a fine film. For a modern film, it’s very good. But it’s not better than Top Gun in any way. The characters in Top Gun: Maverick are kind of appealing, though not as appealing as the characters in Top Gun. The action and the footage of planes flying is mostly exciting, though not as exciting as the action in Top Gun. As to be expected, the soundtrack for Top Gun: Maverick is nothing to talk about. The soundtrack for Top Gun, however, is one of the most appealing aspects of the film, including the score by Harold Faltermeyer. Penelope Benjamin, played by Jennifer Connelly, is in the film only for Pete Mitchell to have a love interest. So, on the whole, Top Gun: Maverick is a competently made and mostly entertaining, though formulaic, film. Aside from films by Marvel Studios, I think that Top Gun: Maverick is the best new film that I’ve seen since Free Guy (2021). It’s not as good as Free Guy, however, and it’s definitely not as good as Top Gun. Top Gun can be seen again and again, and this is what people do. This isn’t what I do, but I did see it again recently because I haven’t seen it in years. It’s one of the most well-known films of the 1980s. Top Gun: Maverick, on the other hand, has little or no replay value. I didn’t enjoy seeing it as much as some of the other sequels or remakes that got made in the last decade, like Creed (2015), Creed II (2018), or The Great Gatsby (2013). Still, I wasn’t at all disappointed by it. I think that the glowing reviews by the bought and paid for film critics that Top Gun: Maverick has received can be attributed to the fact that it features certain propaganda. Let’s not forget that these are the same people that wrote glowing reviews about Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), which is at best a mediocre film. In my opinion, it’s simply a bad film. But this bad film has a score of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. This fact should tell you how many of the so-called professional film critics are bought and paid for. The Force Awakens was released in theaters not that long ago, and, therefore, I remember the hype that was created for the film quite well. This hype was mostly artificial and not real. Still, there were many people that were genuinely excited because they were finally going to see a new Star Wars film. The hype is the thing that made The Force Awakens one of the highest grossing films of all time. Even I fell for the hype because back then I didn’t know as much as I do now. Because of the hype, I expected to see something great, something on par with the original Star Wars trilogy. Some people said that Disney would right the wrongs that George Lucas had created with his prequel trilogy. So, I went to see The Force Awakens as soon as I could. The auditorium where I saw the film was full of people. However, when the film came to an end, I thought, “Is that it?” Some people even clapped. I didn’t clap because I didn’t want to lie to myself and because I’m not a Star Wars fan. The Force Awakens was clearly not the great motion picture experience that I expected. So, I left the cinema and didn’t think about The Force Awakens for quite some time. Later, after reading some good reviews by honest independent critics, I realized that The Force Awakens is a faulty, bland, and forgettable film and that it’s a rip-off of Star Wars (1977). Even George Lucas’s prequel trilogy is better than the tiresome The Force Awakens and its sequels. What happened is that The Walt Disney Company purchased Lucasfilm for several billion dollars and then made an unoriginal product, with the usual Disney formula, as quickly as possible in order to cash in on its new popular IP. However, I’m not one of those young, reactionary white (mostly American) men that have been “Trump supporters” for the last several years and that hate the oligarchical propaganda, policies, and restrictions that have become more prominent in the last decade, as the economic depression continued to drag on. I’m more open-minded. Therefore, I’m not going to say that I hate every Star Wars film that got released by Disney. Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) is the one Star Wars film that got released by Disney that I like. I think that it’s the best Star Wars film since the original trilogy. Unfortunately, it’s also the Star Wars film that performed poorly at the box office. I also like a few scenes from Rogue One (2016), though I think that this film as a whole is not enjoyable to watch.
Since Persona 3 is the video game that I enjoyed playing the most in recent months, I think that it’s worth reviewing it. Persona 3 doesn’t appear on my favorite list, which is the list of the greatest video games on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_considered_the_best), but I still decided to play it because it’s a Persona game. It’s not quite as polished as Persona 4, but it’s still one of the best games for the PlayStation 2, and there were many good games released for the PS2. I think that some of the locations in Persona 3 are even more beautiful than the locations in Persona 4. Persona 3 has very appealing graphics. The character designs are excellent. They’re perhaps better than the character designs in Persona 4. The gameplay, as to be expected, is almost identical to the gameplay of Persona 4. It takes a little while for Persona 3 to become an exciting game because there’s little to do right after the game begins. As is the case with Persona 4 and Persona 5, it’s best to use a good guide when playing Persona 3 in order to know what happens every day. As good as Persona 3 is, I don’t think that it has much replay value. You can, of course, play the game a second time in order to develop social links that you couldn’t develop the first time around. But you can also watch videos on YouTube about developing social links instead of playing the game a second time. The graphics and the designs in the game are beautiful. The characters and story are interesting and original, much more so than in Persona 5. For example, one of the characters in the protagonist’s group is a female robot and another one is a small dog. However, I don’t have the urge to play the game again, like I had the urge to play Persona 4, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XII, Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill 2, or Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty again. Perhaps the reason why this is the case is because it takes a long time to finish playing Persona 3. This game is long. Speaking of Shadow of the Colossus, I recently got to play Ico. This is odd because I played Shadow of the Colossus, which is a game that got made by the same developers, several times some years ago. Well, Ico is a different game, but it’s almost as memorable and as beautiful as Shadow of the Colossus. Its gameplay is different because it’s about solving puzzles in order to progress in a castle. It’s also quite a short game. It can be finished in under 9 hours if you know what you’re doing. Another game that left an impression on me is Chrono Trigger. I played this game in 2021. I had already played Chrono Cross, which is the sequal to Chrono Trigger, years ago. Chrono Cross is one of my favorite games, and it’s also one of the first games that I’ve played. I could have played Chrono Trigger much earlier if I wanted to, but I never had the urge to play it and to find out if the hype around it is justified. In fact, the popularity of this game is so great that some people didn’t like Chrono Cross, which is a superb game, simply because it’s not a direct sequel to Chrono Trigger. Is the obsession of these people justified? This depends on whether or not you’ve played Chrono Trigger before playing Chrono Cross. Chrono Trigger really is a great game, and it’s one of the best games for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. This game came out at a time when people didn’t have many games to choose from and when emulation wasn’t widely available. Therefore, if players got to play a game that they thought is exceptional, they usually played it several times and it left a strong impression on them. Chrono Trigger is one of these games. In my case, Chrono Cross is one of these games. Therefore, I don’t have an obsession with Chrono Trigger. The graphics in this game are as good as they get for a SNES game. The score by Yasunori Mitsuda is very effective and memorable. The combat is absorbing. What makes this game truly stand out is the story, and also the characters. There are moments in this game that the player will never forget. So, the love that some people have for this game is understandable. Another RPG that left an impression on me not that long ago is Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. I’m somewhat of a fan of Hiroshi Minagawa and Yasumi Matsuno because they made some great games for the SNES, for the PlayStation, and for the PlayStation 2. Final Fantasy Tactics is one of my favorite games. I own the updated version of this game, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, on my PlayStation Portable. If you want to play Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, it’s best to get the updated version for the PSP because it looks beautiful on this handheld. The music score by Hitoshi Sakimoto is almost as impressive as his music score for Final Fantasy Tactics. I’ve already played Final Fantasy Tactics three times, and, after finishing Tactics Ogre, I can say that I can play this game again as well, though I haven’t done so yet.
The blog of Igor Boyar 