Finished Arcane: League of Legends on Netflix. I’ve never played a minute of League of Legends and had zero interest in this series, but it’s received so much fawning praise from both audiences and professional critics, I decided to take a look.
Gotta say, not a fan.
I dug the experimental 2D/3D animation style. And the central relationship between Vi and Powder/Jinx is mostly well developed and executed.
But beyond those elements, there are so many other plot points and characters in its Game of Thrones approach that I could just not be brought to give a damn about. I audibly groaned “Oh my God, I don’t care” after the 17th debate on the benefits and risks of HexTech experimentations.
Plus I’m just a little burnt out of the binary High-rise Elites vs Scrappy Street Slums trope - although I should say Arcane does an admirable job pushing the concept to its narrative limits. Just starts bursting at the seams in doing so.
Video Game adaptations are enjoying a bit of a golden age right now, but I wonder if because they’ve been so awful up to this point, they’re being graded on a curve.