allnewsuperfake

When during the first minutes the most tired of all superhero cliches entered the frame - aka: *The Multiverse* - I honestly thought it was meant to be satire. That's how good the first season was: It just could not be anything else.

Turns out, so far this is more like the first season was an all-you-can-eat buffet, and now we get all the stuff that was left over and that nobody wanted. The three main characters are basically reset by ignoring everything the previous season set up and destroying their lives, and in one case, even the face, so for a few minutes I thought: Maybe *this* is also an alternative universe. I mean, Green Lantern looks like Uncle Fester with red hair, so it's possible, right?

But after witnessing the least sexy orgy I've ever seen I won't get my hopes up, this is probably it, the sad new reality of my personal surprise hit from three years ago.

The boss was busy writing version 29 of the least interesting man on the planet, and this was more of a side project, it seems. I'll gladly wait until all the other episodes are out to give this another go, but the wait is indeed over, I can gladly forget about it until then.

"King wows with the most gut-wrenching tale of kids triumphing over evil since It", is what Publishers Weekly wrote about the novel, and it certainly is - so let's have a look at the cast, shall we?

Yes, there isn't a single person in there that is a "kid", especially not one in the 10-12 range that make up the cast of the source material. And it's not just that they aged up everyone, they get played by people who then look a full decade to old. Half of them would get picked up by the police if they lingered too long in a school. So the core of the novel, the characters, their relationsships, their motives, the dynamic between them can't emerge, and the little and big triumphant moments would never be the same. Picturing these 20-somethings as helpless, innocent victims is just bizarre, and yet the series tries.

And to make clear that not only did they not understand the source material on a fundamental level, but they didn't even scratch the surface, we delete and replace side characters and events to make space for the self inserts we get instead even though they are just in the way and the feeble attempts to make them matter are just embarassing.

Unfortunately the presentation does not help here, the set design is uninspired, the makeup is godawful, and the editing repeatedly pulls the brakes whenever things get to interesting.

I don't know what it is with this author and the attempts to get his books on the big screen. It's a curse he should write a book about one day.

We know how it normally goes with reboots or sequels and prequels these days: Too often you wonder why people are in charge and/or hire people that seem to openly dislike the franchise and/or somehow have convinced themselves that they can do better.

Ironically it's a breath of fresh air if they just stay with the concept, respect the lore and the "rules" that come with it and still find ways to introduce new ideas that mix well into the result.

So I really did like Final Destination: Another one. The opening sequence is memorable, which is half the deal, and Death working down the list and getting really creative about it is as entertaining as ever. My favorite part was the moment when I realized that, no, this was not a bad casting, this was intentional; I won't say more - but while nothing stellar happens on the acting front, at least some thought went into the process of choosing these people.

The main protagonist is unfortunately the biggest weaness in that regard, and some plot elements really stretch the good old suppension of disbelieve to the breaking point, but overall there was no real dealbreaker, which is so much better than most of these project go.

It shows that it can be done, just by keeping the spirit intact, you can take one of these old IPs and make a decent, entertaining movie where the fact that it's been a decade is actually the main reason why it works - you had time to build up an appetite, and while is is certainly not cuisine, it went down without a bad aftertaste.