Lawnmower Boy

When we first meet Thor in his debut movie, he's been living what amounts to an extended childhood. Over the 1,500 years of his life he's always been privileged, never known failure, never had to suffer the consequences of his actions. (We've learned that humans can live that way for at least seven decades.)   He defined himself as a warrior, a prince, a hero, but in the end he failed at all those things. Over the span of a decade he lost his power (albeit temporarily), lost his lover, lost his whole family, lost all his closest friends, lost his home, and lost the weapon that was like a part of him. He failed to protect his people, and lost most of them. He failed to save half the people in the entire universe. That so overwhelmed him that he lost the will to do anything but eat and drink and play video games, becoming a mental and physical mockery of who he was.
 
I don't care how long you've lived, if all that doesn't prompt deep soul searching, I don't know what could.

Yeah, fight scenes aren't good if they are only filler or are just something to be exciting.  Fights have to do the same thing as the rest of the story, and have to serve the story, while moving it forward (and this is true in games as well).  Fights should help show the characters, develop that character's story and person, advance the plot, and especially this: it should demonstrate problem solving.

The fight should show ways the character deals with crisis, both emotionally and technically (I need to block with my shield, but if I do that i expose my flank, how do I handle that?).  Ideally a fight leaves the viewers understanding the characters involved better and resolving the plot a little more, not just broken buildings and "wow that was amazing looking."  I haven't seen a lot of the DC movies, so I cannot say if they do this or not, but it seems like the best ones do at least.
 
As for his main point about flight, eh, I guess so?  But the reason there doesn't ever seem to be any stakes is because the characters he describes fighting are basically invulnerable.  Its not that flying removes the tension, its that Shazam (Captain Marvel) is essentially impossible to actually hurt.  I cannot comment on Sivana because they totally rewrote the character for the movie.  Superman and Zod, ditto.  The Thor/Loki/Hela sequence wasn't better because of the consequences, it was designed so that Hela can get where she needs to without them stopping her.  It was a plot device.
 
Flight doesn't cause the problems he describes.  Lack of real consequences does.  Yes, you can throw superman through eleven buildings, but he just brushes the dust off his cape and flies back. The key problem with flying is that having people fight in real time in the air is confusing and vertigo-inducing.  Its like the Transformer movies, with dozens of gigantic, nearly-identical robot things battling in weird angles, and nobody knows what the hell is going on.  I mean, I guess if you are going for a War of the Worlds "humans on the ground confused and frightened" approach, that works, but if you're trying to tell a story with what the characters do meaning anything... it cannot work.
 
Watch the Sivana/Shazam fight clips shown in that video.  What are they doing?  Most of the time your eyes are just trying to keep up with what is going on, and the cape does not help matters by obscuring and confusing actions by the characters.  Ultimately, none of their moves or punches matter, because they're difficult to track and don't really do anything to their foe anyway.  You have to have each move clear and precise, which the Superman movies did much better, despite how pointless they were.  What Zod and Superman do works, because you can tell what is going on and who is doing what. 
 
What didn't work in their case was that Superman should care better what he's doing to the city, and Zod should not be nearly as capable fighting in the air, and WANT to go to the ground, where he's got decades of experience over Supes.
 
Its a storytelling issue: they didn't write for the characters or to show problem solving, or to advance the plot, they showed spectacle and wow look how strong they are, which we already know.

Wisdom from The Sphinx:
 
"You must be like the wolf pack... not like the six-pack."
"You must lash out with every limb, like the octopus who plays the drums."
"Learn to hide your strikes from your opponent and you'll more easily strike his hide."
"When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack."
"He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions."
"Do not go there, my son! When you doubt your powers, you give power to your doubts."
"We are number one! All others are number two, or lower."
"Sometimes, the true hero is the one with the courage to run away."

Back in high school, my US History teachers used to run slide shows and talk about each picture. They'd occasionally go off-script to see if anyone was still awake in the class.
 
Click. "And here's a picture of Dolly Madison, a great woman entrepreneur. She had a fleet of trucks that delivered baked goods throughout the South."
 
Click. "And here's one of the new rides being developed at Disneyland." (I'm pretty sure that it was this picture of the Steamship Caroline going over Niagara Falls)

After blundering across it again, I am seriously contemplating doing this next year.

Making progress on the fence. 
 
Before: What we got when we moved here. 

 
During: Blasted with a pressure washer (which is a lot more satisfying than expected).

 
After: Mom is doing the painting, Talipot Palm green. 

 

My promotion at work is official on Monday, to a senior property tech. I had to move to a different casino in our company, but thankfully, the commute is still pretty short (about 15 minutes or so by freeway, a little longer by surface streets).

Blackpool has a zoo?

Physics, Class of 2020. Just wait.
 

Libraries have the best signs.
 

Myotonic Dystrophy is a form of muscular dystrophy.
 
Tachycardia is an abnormally rapid heartbeat.
 
Since they specify that it's only in a portion of his heart rather than the whole thing, it sounds like his heartbeat between the upper chambers and lower weren't in synch.
 
If that's what was happening, it'd cause additional weakness beyond the dystrophy. And perhaps blood continually backing up in his system because it's not getting into and out of the heart properly.
 
 

I would stand with you but the thing that gets forgotten at this time of year is that Easter candy is for CHILDREN! 
Cute little buggers with no sense of taste. They actually like junk candy.  Decent quality chocolate would be wasted on them.  Besides, mostly they take one or two bites of something, squish in their fist, drop it onto the carpet for the dog to try and eat and move on to the next brightly wrapped piece of inedible drek.
    Anyone thinking about wasting hand-dipped caramels on a three year old deserves the frustration they feel.
 Put them to bed after their sugar comas and then break out the good stuff. 

Moon Knight ep 3:
 
♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ "Would you like to swing all the stars?" ♬ ♫ ♩ ♪
♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ "Rewind the night for your avatars?"♬ ♫ ♩ ♪
♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ "Would you like to swing all the stars?" ♬ ♫ ♩ ♪
♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ "Or would you rather be a ghoul?" ♬ ♫ ♩ ♪

Recurrent Ventricular Tachycardia due to Myotonic Dystrophy type II.