DirkDiamond

Takes up a whole special feature disk on the 4k box set for Game of Thrones. Seeming to indicate something special was forthcoming, but this is really bad. Back story worthy of its own full scale presentation, maybe, which Season 1 of House of Dragons has indicated, not Season 2 though, sadly. Maybe it further helps us understand some significant developments towards the end of GOT Season 8, some seemingly all of a sudden developments. Its low budget to an extent it closely represents the work of a youtube hobbyist, or something like that.

It has some aspects that indicate a restrained talent, it seems, perhaps some kind of horribly unreasonable production time limitation, giving us nothing but a slightly more giving story board presentation. Actually, reminds me of a PowerPoint presentation, more than a meaningful, storied animation.

Some aspects of the gameplay are fine - some, right up until you start noticing the limited amount of variety. Not much enemy diversity here, which is a terrible shame, in particular enemy types, and all that. Strong DEI focus on White Men as the leading enemies, which is painfully cliche at this stage. A bit more diversity with respect to our bad guys would have been much appreciated. It's going along the "gender diversity" route as well with aspects of the narrative, and character choices, but quite full on with a lot of that, to an extent that actually pulls you out of the game, and back into the social politics of the real world. Nothing subtle in the writing at all. I wonder if they could have tapped into these things with a bit more care and attention. It's a shame, because I don't expect to be pulled back into real world social political dynamics when I'm playing a fantasy game, however maybe that is indeed where some of these issues are best placed. Hmmmm? Interesting thought there.

These things can actually be helpful to tap into, but the full frontal approach, so to speak, in this game, unfortunately doesn't appear to have been particularly helpful.

Another aspect of repetition that I quite dislike is all the "zit" popping that goes on, in order to progress through most areas. Lumps of blight that need to be burst here there and everywhere, in light of which the overtly "kind" and cheery tone of the narrative feels very out of place. Corny and quite patronising actually.

In any case, you can avoid certain themes, to an extent, and get one of the worst endings, or allow it to go full throttle at you with respect to it's ideological overreach, in order to get a "good ending." There were certain story elements I steered away from, which seemed important to me, and although you don't get off completely Scot free, you can make the experience somewhat more tolerable.

I paid full price for this the moment it became available, because of my previous love of the franchise. Such a blasted shame it all went the way that it has here, and I've felt forced to play it in the interests of not throwing £70 in the bin.

There are some good bits, some decent moments of story, here and there, however these are sadly quite limited. I've had to engage in a considerable degree of radical acceptance in order to move through this game.

I won't make the same mistake again!

There's a lot of nice stuff for a long-time fan to see in here: new pics, video footage, etc, that has yet to pop up in anything else; however, it was presented and edited in a way that didn't work.

There were some nice music choices throughout, but the storytelling elements didn't quite come together very well.

The narrative elements were good, taken from the interviews done to piece together his assisted autobiography, but it didn't tell a complete story.

I feel it would have served the movie better to be more focussed on the tour while looking back to areas in the past rather more than trying to tell the story of his origins, going on to jump ahead every now and then to aspects of the final tour. Other than the final tour and a limited amount of backstage stuff from that time, it only went as far as 1975.

Admittedly, the recent tour book focussed on the tour, locations, reflecting on time spent in those locations over the years, and performing, so I suppose they didn't want to do that again, so why not tell the whole story, in which case, in relation to the final tour.

There are key aspects of the narrative that have wiped out the 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s, 4 decades, but in a way that seems to dismiss several significant strengths. It contrasts the early days, when he said he'd like to be a father, to his last tour when he was one. Basically, it seems primarily to be a way to tell only that particular story - "Never too Late...." to be a dad, I suppose, but that's the sort of thing you'd expect from an hour TV special on regular TV. It did feel like a misfire.

It is okay to present the contrast as they did, but it limits itself, in rather a less effective way than they had likely supposed.

As much as I like it, the new song for the movie also doesn't fit. It works, with reference to the movie, but not as part of it, in the end credits, at least not to me.

There are also a few things that go too far. For example, a large section of the movie features Elton performing on stage at Dodgers Stadium 2022, which is already on Disney+, where the documentary is also based. The Rocket Hour segment features too much time spent online with other people. Both segments could have had a much tighter edit, because they lacked the meaning they were trying to convey.

It isn't actually bad though, it's just lacking in certain areas.