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Sitting through The 8-Bit Guy's AI-generated movie because it's Friday and I'm doing busywork at work. 5 seconds in, it's already 'Threat Level Midnight' levels of self-insertion. (And Threat Level Midnight is a satirical embedded work in a comedy sitcom. Let that marinate.)

The narrative structure is... awkward. The exposition feels forced. The dialogue is really unpolished. From the get-go we're dropped into a talk show scene where the protagonist explains what he does like he's a narrator instead of an interviewee, to the camera rather than the host.

The first action scene — a flashback originating from that talk show interview — feels more like a dance choreography than a superhero battle. There's no shot continuity. A tranquilizer arrow spawns from nowhere and there's this long agony shot focusing on a character that wasn't introduced.

After that action scene, several blocks of $CITY's downtown look like a war zone, and newscasters are seemingly busy interviewing the superhumans involved like it's a postgame interview! Especially the villains. (Well, in inferred them as villains, it's a bit unclear tbh.)

So the protagonist (and yes, his name is David) captures one of the (presumed) villains who's unconscious, and then in the following hospital bed scene, shot continuity suffers some more as she seemingly flips between conscious and unconscious.

OK, let's talk about scores. If you're putting on a song with lyrics, it's because it's a climax scene or a very emotional scene, and you're trying to convey that to your audience. You don't do that on a 10-second action scene during the exposition act, wtf!

OK, there's just zero shot continuity throughout. Viper (antagonist) wakes up in a hospital bed. Cut to PoV, David right up front staring right at her. Cut to reverse shot of Viper, she says one line... Cut to two-shot as David responds... SITTING IN A CHAIR BY THE BED.

This sort of shit happens in every single scene I've seen so far. Characters and object spawn and vanish and change positions and locations between shots in a continuous scene, ALL THE TIME. Often in very jarring and non-subtle ways. Continuity is basically Filmmaking 101 and this one scores an F.

Both David and Viper have the emotional delivery of a text-to-speech system, which... checks out, I guess. *Director mode* CUT! David! You're supposed to be *panicking* right now, and yet all you did was raise your voice a little! Give me a gasp, play it frantic, raise your heart rate a little!

And also, stop staring toward a corner of the room while you're supposed to be talking to a character who's *behind* you! This isn't a script reading for Pete's sake! Erm. Speaking of which, they're surrounded by concrete walls and there's zero reverb. It sounds like they're in a studio.

Is this archeology, or is this post-disaster rubble cleanup?

Oh, OH! They added reverb to the dialogue in exactly one of the scenes, when they're walking through a long hallway! You can even hear their footsteps! But everything else in that massive concrete bunker sounds like a recording studio.

OH MY GOD I forgot that we were in a flashback for like a whole ten minutes. We're back to that cursed talk show now, but David is nowhere to be found, and the rest of the superhero crew is being interviewed instead. What a weird jump.

Damn, I've never seen an audience stop clapping so abruptly. It's like everyone is a robot from deep in the Uncanny Valley. Wait. No, that checks out actually.

Focus is on the characters across the table, David and his laptop are soft, but the table's wood grain has roughly the same sharpness throughout. This... is not how depth of field works. 🙃

THE SCALE! THE PROPORTIONS! THE AISLE FULL OF CANS WITH A SIGN THAT SAYS "PRODUCE"!

Y'all, I broke out yt-dlp and ffmpeg to cut this out, this is too good. LOOK AT HOW THE CANS FLIP TO BOXES BETWEEN SHOTS! LOOK AT HOW HER BOOK MORPHS AT THE END!