TESO: Attack on Coldharbour

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

My first task from Hollow City is to refill it by saving as many people as I can from the various torturous dremora in Coldharbour, most of whom are Fighter and Mages guild members. There are others here too whom I ally with, such as elf-eating Lamias, Argonians who have sold the soul of their Hist tree to Molag Bal, and a repentant Angoff (the druid terrorist leader from before).

Once the force is assembled it's simply a matter of pushing forward and upward in Coldharbour, slaying the armies of vampires, dremora, and daedra in the way. Molag Bal shows up in person to try stop us but as expected Meridia reveals herself to duel with him while the rest of us continue with the mission of destroying the Planemeld - aka the doohickey that Molag Bal requires for his grand plan.

 Whatever you say, boss!

Many / most of my allies die in the experience, but we are ultimately victorious in "planting the bombs and blowing things up" which pretty much puts a stop on Molag Bal's world-killing plan. Meridia takes us survivors back to the Hollow City for celebrations. Wish they made it more clear who made it and who didn't though. What is this, the Deathly Hallows or something?

Star Wars: Rogue One

Develop emotional attachments at your peril!

While The Force Awakens is sort of a retelling of A New Hope, Rogue One goes totally off tandem to do it's own thing to tell the story of just how the rebels got their hands on that Death Star schematic.

As expected the visuals and soundtrack are great and the majority of the characters do their parts well too. Big thumbs up to Donnie Yen. It also ticks the box of "action flick" given the number of explosions and my favorite part is that most of the good guys die.

Queue new material for Star Wars Battlefront...

I also like that they show how each of them goes out (though majority is through the same way). None of this Deathly Hallows crap where you just hear about it later or see people possibly dead, possibly sleeping with no explanation. There are equally silly bits though, such as why is there a Prince of Persia trap in the archives? Lol.

Definitely not a movie for everyone, but it turned out to be right up my alley! I give Rogue One 3.5 imperial grenades out of 5.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I & II)

Or Deathly boring then just Deathly. :P

Only recently did I get around to watching the final two movies of the Harry Potter storyline, and they certainly are very different beasts. If you haven't watched any of the previous movies you are going to be quite lost too, so I wouldn't start here and go backwards.

After the opening Part I is a snooze fest, due to the heavy reliance of "intrigue" in the plot and prior connection to characters introduced in earlier films. If like me, you don't remember or don't care about said characters then this is certainly not going to keep your attention. From an anime watcher stand point I'm almost inclined to say it's filler.

What the hell are we watching?

Nothing wrong with the acting or the effects, it's just really the plodding storyline that kills it. No such issue in Part II though, since they can finally focus on all the action as the forces or good and evil battle it out, already making it a much more entertaining film for me.

There's a fair bit of death happening in both movies too, but for me it's almost like the movie maker tried to keep in more to the PG side of things with many characters dying off screen - Harry just sees their bodies or hears about their demise later on. I suppose that's how it is in the books(?) but I for one would have liked to see just exactly how they died, because gore = fun.

I think the main problem though with both movies is that it's counting on you to be invested and on-side with people already, which is fine if you are. Less fine if you aren't. That's not a problem with these book-end movies per se, but it certainly means its a problem in the earlier ones.

All up, I give Deathly Hallows I 1.5 brooms out of 5 and Deathly Hallows II 3 wands out of 5. For non Potter fans who haven't yet seen them, Part II is entertaining enough but you might need to wade through Part I to get there. It really is a "play it in the background while doing something else" film.