My Favorite Paul Thomas Anderson Film

I'm frequently left slightly off-balance by Paul Thomas Anderson movies.  I enjoy and admire them, because Anderson is one of the best filmmakers currently working, but I'm never quite sure if I get them the way that he means for me to.  Are the elements that I take seriously supposed to be funny?  Am I missing major themes or ideas that haven't been spelled out for me?  Things that are left open to interpretation sometimes make me feel anxious that I'm interpreting them wrong.  Everything is connected in "Magnolia," but I'm almost certain that there are connections that I missed somewhere.

The only Paul Thomas Anderson film I don't feel this way towards is "Punch-Drunk Love," and that's because I enjoy it so much that I don't much care if I am missing anything.  It is unabashedly a movie romance, filled with big emotions, vibrant colors, indelible images, and grandiose expressions of love.  It also stars Adam Sandler, made back in 2002 when Adam Sandler was a movie star known for playing one particular type of aggressive man-child character in his movies.  He's playing a variation on that same character in this movie too, but the difference is that in "Punch-Drunk Love," this is a liability.  The universe does not reward Barry Egan for his outbursts of violence or his juvenile behavior, until he finds a reason to change his life, and turn his worst habits to his advantage.

The Roger Ebert review of "Punch-Drunk Love" is legendary for Ebert changing his negative opinion of Adam Sandler once he saw Sandler in a role that gave him the ability to play a full-fledged human being.  For me, as someone who avoided the early Sandler comedies, it was a signal that Sandler was an actor that I should be paying attention to.  It was "Punch-Drunk Love" that made me a fan of his, and Barry Egan is still my favorite of his characters by far.  In Barry I could see all the loneliness, frustration, rage, and fear that drove his destructive behavior.  And for the first time, I could see and appreciate the sweetness and the wonder mixed in there too.  I shared his delight at finding an abandoned harmonium and the loophole in an airline mile giveaway program.  I rooted for him when he threw caution to the wind and followed the lovely Lena to Hawaii.

"Punch-Drunk Love" is also one of the most beautiful films of its era, thanks to Anderson and cinematographer Robert Elswit.  There's a lot of experimentation going on with light temperature, shape, and silhouette to make the visual contrasts especially bold.  There's a very limited color palette and the major colors are all associated with various emotions and characters - Barry is blue and Lena is red.  The action is broken up by abstract collages of bright colors, created by Jeremy Blake.  Once you start looking, there are stripes and blocks of color all over the place, and they all look amazing.  Even the lens flares look gorgeous.  The recurring aural motif is Shelly Duvall's kitschy "He Loves Me," from Robert Altman's notorious "Popeye" movie, and it's a goddamned delight.  

I've come to appreciate Paul Thomas Anderson's other films, to varying degrees, but "Punch-Drunk Love" remains my favorite, probably because it's so declarative and unsubtle.  We're meant to root for the guy to get the girl and stand up to the evil mattress salesman played by Philip Seymour Hoffman.  We want to see red and blue come together, and for color to chase away the images of blank walls and empty gray streets.  We want love to conquer all, and here it's allowed to.  There are Anderson films with smarter writing, better performances, and more accomplished filmmaking, but "Punch-Drunk Love" has what I love most about movies, which is that it provokes a purity of emotion that you just don't get anywhere else.

What I've Seen - Paul Thomas Anderson

Hard Eight (1996)

Boogie Nights (1997)

Magnolia (1999)

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

There Will Be Blood (2007)

The Master (2012)

Inherent Vice (2014)

Phantom Thread (2017)

Licorice Pizza (2021)

One Battle After Another (2025)

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"She-Ra," Year One

Netflix's license to "She-Ra and the Princesses of Power" has expired, which finally spurred me to finish it.  I'm not going to write a post for each of the five seasons, but I wanted to single out the first one, just to put down some introductory remarks and talk about why this reboot of the old 1980s "She-Ra" series stands out from the crowd. Created by ND Stevenson, with Dreamworks Animation and NE4U, the new "She-Ra" is one of those rare animated programs that tells a complete, serialized story over the course of 52 episodes, split up into multiple seasons.  The original "She-Ra," was created to be a distaff counterpart to the popular "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe."  I don't remember much about that version, except that it featured a cast of female characters who all had the exact same Barbie-esque body type.

The new "She-Ra" is working off of the same basic premise and includes an impressive number of the old characters.  In the magical world of Etheria, the evil conquering Horde of the villain Hordak (Keston John) is at war with the Rebellion, led by Angella (Reshma Shetty), the Queen of the Kingdom of Bright Moon.  Hordak's sorceress Shadow Weaver (Lorraine Toussant) promotes a promising cadet, Adora (Aimee Carrero), to the position of Force Captain, over her best friend Catra (AJ Michalka).  However, Adora has a couple of encounters that prompt her to rethink life with the Horde.  First, she finds a magical sword that can turn her into a formidable warrior woman, She-Ra.  Then, she meets a few members of the Rebellion - Angella's daughter Glimmer (Karen Fukuhara) and her bestie Bow (Marcus Scribner).  Unfortunately, Adora changing sides doesn't sit well with Catra, who takes this as abandonment, and decides to become She-Ra's mortal enemy.

"She-Ra and the Princesses of Power" is a massive upgrade over the 80s series by every conceivable metric.  The softer, anime-inspired designs and more fluid animation are such a pleasure to look at, with Adora and the princesses being of all shapes and sizes and skin tones.  There's a lot of "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" influence here, with Adora and friends being a disparate group of personalities who have to learn to get along and work together to defeat the Horde.  They're much more obviously teenagers and young adults in this version, dealing with common interpersonal issues and anxieties, like Glimmer not wanting to disappoint her mother, and Adora trying to win over new allies.  Catra is very redeemable, but at the end of the first season she's heading further and further down the path of villainy as Adora embraces heroism.  However, a major throughline of the whole series is that Adora won't give up on her.

A lot of the buzz around the show at the time of release was that the new "She-Ra" was LGBT friendly and very diverse, but the more important thing is that it's an action show that is for girls that takes the tastes and interests of girls into account to a degree that you don't see very often.  There are pastel colors and sparkles and magic everywhere.  There's a mermaid princess character, Mermista (Vella Lovell), and another princess, Perfuma (Genesis Rodriguez), who can magically weaponize flowers and plants.  She-Ra also has a rainbow pegasus named Swiftwind (Adam Ray), like the original version, but now Swiftwind is a committed revolutionary, and can drop a one-liner like nobody's business.  The ensemble features a few male good guys, Bow and the pirate Sea Hawk (Jordan Fisher), who are portrayed as steadfast, supportive friends, and good examples of positive masculinity.  And this is never remarked upon or treated as anything novel.  

There's plenty of action, as you'd expect from a show about warring forces, though the robots take most of the damage.  She-Ra and her friends get plenty of chances to demonstrate bravery and fortitude and use cool weapons.  Because the show is for children, the fighting is never very intense, but I was surprised at how often "She-Ra" didn't pull its emotional punches.  There's quite a bit of material about childhood trauma, toxic relationships, and unhealthy coping mechanisms that get pretty dark by the later seasons.  However, we'll talk about that next time.

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"Zootopia 2" and "Wicked: for Good"

"Zootopia" is my favorite modern Disney animated film.  It's also one of the few that I thought was a natural franchise starter, being a buddy cop story, so I was looking forward to the inevitable sequel.  Frankly, I didn't think we'd have to wait this long.  Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde return, this time investigating a mysterious newcomer to the city, Gary De'Snake (Ke Huy Quan), who has something to do with the  powerful industrialist Milton Lynxley (David Straithairn).  Other characters include a conspiracy podcaster beaver, Nibbles (Fortune Feimster), ex-movie star turned politician, Mayor Winddancer (Patrick Warburton), Milton's son Pawbert (Andy Samberg), and Nick and Judy's therapist, Dr. Fuzzby (Quinta Brunson). 

Like the first "Zootopia," the sequel is about interspecies conflicts standing in for real-world issues.  This time immigrants and gentrification are the main targets, with reptiles being revealed as a hidden underclass in Zootopia.  Judy and Nick are also dealing with partnership frictions, as Judy is keen on proving to the still doubtful department that she and Nick can be great detectives, while Nick just wants to get through the case in one piece.  "Zootopia 2" follows the formula for most animated sequels, repeating many of the plot beats of the original and indulging in plenty of callbacks, while adding to the Zootopia universe.  We get to see more of the city, including a swamp neighborhood populated by aquatic denizens, and catch up with a few old friends.  Shakira is back with a new earworm, called "Zoo," and there continues to be plenty of slapstick antics for the kids and pop culture references and animal puns for the grown-ups.     

As formulaic as it is, the execution here is good enough that I have zero complaints with "Zootopia 2."  It's not very ambitious and doesn't break any new ground, but it functions just fine as a detective and mystery story, and is rousingly entertaining for the entire length of its running time.  It's not as good as the original "Zootopia," but it doesn't feel extraneous or padded out like some of the other recent Disney sequels, and I'll be happy to see more "Zootopia" sequels make their way to the big screen in the future.  

"Wicked: For Good" was exactly what I expected it to be, which is bad.  The second half of the musical it's adapting is not as good as the first half, and has none of the most famous songs or sequences.  Additional songs were composed to try and compensate for this, but it didn't help.  There's way too much story told in far too little time, and the movie still feels overlong and unwieldy.  What's worse, the first "Wicked" film did so well with family audiences, I suspect that the filmmakers felt it necessary to tone down some of the more challenging content to accommodate younger and more sensitive viewers.  The one really effective horror moment I remember from the musical is totally undercut in the film version, and all the bite and bitterness is quickly taken out of the Glinda/Elphaba hostilities.

Another issue is that the events of this film are supposed to take place at the same time as "The Wizard of Oz," so we're constantly getting bits of Dorothy's journey going on in the background, and catching glimpses of familiar characters.  The trouble is that John Chu and his collaborators can't get all the pieces to fit.  In addition to not being able to use the famous iconography of the MGM film (no ruby slippers allowed), there are so many instances of missing or muddled motivations, inexplicable behavior, and just plain mismatched storylines that I have to question whether we really needed Dorothy in this movie at all.  Then again, without her presence, the already moody, downbeat story would be even smaller scale and decidedly less spectacular.

Some things are improved - after all the criticism about the cinematography, commendable efforts have been made in that department.  The production values remain top notch, and "Wicked: For Good" looks gorgeous, if nothing else.  I also like the increased role of Glinda in the story, and the greater emphasis on her friendship with Elphaba.  Unfortunately, this isn't enough to compensate for some of the glaring, fundamental problems with the film.  There are enough good moments that I think this is still worth a watch for those who liked the first film, but expectations should be kept very, very low.

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"A Man on the Inside," Year Two

I've spent some time comparing and contrasting "A Man on the Inside" with the other major mystery show featuring go-getter seniors, "Only Murders in the Building."  I'm sorry to say that "A Man on the Inside" too often falls short.  It has no lack of talent, having been created by Michael Schur, features the work of writers like Megan Amram, and has a horde of great acting talent.  However, "A Man on the Inside" feels very slight this year, when I was hoping it would branch out a bit more and establish itself as a show that could sustain multiple seasons.

Moving past its original premise, Charles has taken on a new case investigating a theft at the fictional Wheeler College, where the provost, Holly Bidgemark (Jill Talley), is hoping to secure a major donation from a billionaire, Brad Vinick (Gary Cole), thus ensuring the school's future.  Someone has made off with a laptop full of sensitive material and left a threatening note.  The suspects include members of the faculty, including professors played by David Strathairn and Mary Steenburgen, so Charles is on the case, posing as a visiting lecturer as he searches for clues.

I love spotting familiar older actors in this series, like Constance Marie as Julie Kovalenko's estranged mother, and Jackee Harry as a new love interest for Calbert.  Strathairn is a highlight as a grumpy classics professor who immediately antagonizes Charles.  Unfortunately, the mystery doesn't offer much of interest, and the tone of the show has settled for being blandly pleasant and low stakes.  Most of Charles' attention is taken up with a new relationship - he's fallen head over heels for Wheeler's music professor Mona Margadoff (Steenburgen), and often neglects gumshoeing to pursue her.  Julie takes up some of the slack with the investigation, and we also spend more time with Emily, Didi, and some of the Pacific View Retirement Community characters from the first season. 

"Only Murders" has a similarly cuddly dynamic with its leads, but is much more lively and retains a darker humorous edge.  The crimes may be ridiculous, and the baddies may be overdramatic, but there's an urgency to the show that is completely missing from "A Man on the Inside."  It's not just a matter of murders versus thefts, but the universe of "A Man on the Inside" is generally a much nicer, friendlier, slower-paced sitcom setting that is prioritizing an older audience.  And as much as I appreciate this kind of content, I can't help feeling a little too young for it.  Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, who have been a real couple for decades, are absolutely adorable in the show, but their romance did nothing for me.    

I like "A Man on the Inside" better when it's closer to its original format, with Charles eagerly jumping into situations without thinking them through, and discovering that being a spy is harder than it looks.  The season's best episode by far is the one where Charles recruits a couple of his Pacific View friends to help him steal Vinick's phone at a party, which has a lot of fun foibles involving code names and foiled plans.   The season is only eight episodes, but there are several episodes that feel too much like filler, just playing out old sitcom plots instead of moving the case forward.  Also, as much as I like Julie and Emily, the time spent with them that doesn't directly involve Charles feels like I'm watching a different show.  

I'm sure that "A Man on the Inside" could go on for a few more seasons with Charles taking on more cases and making more friends.  There's definitely an audience for this kind of show.  I'm just not sure that I should be part of it.  

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"Stranger Things" Year Five

Minor spoilers ahead.

So, I didn't hate the ending of "Stranger Things."  I thought that it delivered pretty much exactly what it advertised, giving us a final showdown between the kids of Hawkins and the horrors of the Upside Down, while offering a chance to say goodbye to these characters.  It did some things well and other things badly, but the quality of "Stranger Things" has always been extremely variable.  I wasn't surprised at all by the sloppy writing, unsatisfying character arcs, or prioritizing of the spectacle over the story.  However, it also had some highs and hit some bullseyes, and deserves the credit for those too.    

So, the citizens of Hawkins are living with the unwelcome presence of constant military activity and martial law in the wake of Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) having opened more access points to the Upside Down.  Vecna hasbeen making himself scarce, leaving the kids to deal with smaller threats like bullies and the latest evil government scientist, Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton), while preparing for the next battle.  However, Vecna's been busy, and it soon emerges that his latest target is the youngest Wheeler sibling Holly (Nell Fisher) and some of her classmates.  There are a couple of other new faces, like Robin's girlfriend Vickie (Amybeth McNulty), and a new comic relief kid named Derek (Jake Connelly), but otherwise the show has its hands full keeping up with Mike, Dustin, Eleven, Will, Lucas, Max, Steve, Jonathan, Nancy, Robin, Erica, Hopper, and Joyce.  Frankly, there's little room for anyone else at this point.

The more time that the show spends checking in on the show's regular characters, and emphasizing the things we like about them, like Dustin and Steve's rekindled bromance, the more engaging it is. The more it ties itself in knots trying to justify all the new twists and turns of the plotting, the worse it is.  Sadly, Linda Hamilton is utterly wasted playing a generic villain whose actions don't seem to matter at all to the larger story.  Holly, a character I didn't remember existed before this season, suddenly becoming a main character was an odd choice.  It doesn't help that she's miscast - the actress is talented, but feels very off trying to play a much younger kid.  A lot of problems come from trying to juggle too many characters.  Robin shoulders a ton of exposition and emotional heavy lifting while characters like Mike and Jonathan simply don't have much to do.  Frankly, it's a minor miracle that the show finds its way to any kind of coherent ending at all.  

I'm happy to say that all the long-percolating questions about who Nancy will end up with, whether Max will wake up from her coma, and what's been bothering Will all get resolved at last.  We also get a lot more about the origins of the Upside Down, Vecna, and Henry Creel's past, those who enjoy the show's worldbuilding.  However, the vast amount of the show's time and resources, are spent creating big setpieces.  We get everything from home invasions to daring prison escapes to a giant monster battle.  Some of these are very good, and others are less so.  Suspension of disbelief is vital, as some of the plot developments make absolutely no sense, but I'm not inclined to complain because they're very entertaining.  Nancy and Jonathan hashing out their relationship in a room full of melting ectoplasm is weirdly sweet.  Erica taking point in a mass kidnapping scheme is priceless.  Will finally telling the truth is awkward, but I respect that the Duffers stopped the show in its tracks to let him do it properly.  

The three years it took to make these final eight episodes created all of this hype and anticipation that was never going to be matched by the actual finished product, and I feel bad for any fans who expected something more.  However, this wasn't the fatal stumble that the endings of the last "Star Wars" trilogy or "Game of Thrones" were for those franchises.  The ending of "Stranger Things" got the job done, without too many casualties (probably too few), and I can finally disentangle myself from this prolonged goodbye with a sense of relief.

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"The Running Man" and "Now You See Me: Now You Don't"

These two movies opened head to head on the same weekend, and one flopped while the other didn't.  I like them both for different reasons.

First, Edgar Wright's adaptation of Richard Bachman's "The Running Man" is an ambitious, noble failure, which makes it the far more interesting option.  Set in a future dystopia where the slightest rebellion means unemployment and poverty, a down-on-his luck father named Ben Richards (Glen Powell) signs on as a participant in the popular televised death game, "The Running Man."  His goal is to survive for thirty days without being killed, either by the public or by a team of professional "Hunters," to win a billion dollars.  This also means staying ahead of the omnipresent surveillance state, and the vile behind-the-scenes machinations of the show's producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), who deals in misinformation and propaganda to sway his audience's sympathies.

The worldbuilding of "The Running Man" is the best thing about it, offering a sobering look at a society where the flow of information is entirely controlled by the "execs," who subjugate the poor with impunity, and can deepfake anything except the ineffable human element to keep their death games interesting to the public.  There are so many well-considered little details, like public services being rationed, and a thriving black market in old CRT televisions that don't watch you back.  Wright and co-writer Michael Bacall have a lot of targets, spoofing the Kardashians and breakfast cereal ads among other things, but they spend most of their time on the rich/poor divide, passive consumption, and the culture of distraction.  "The Running Man" can only operate the way it does because  Killian and the host Bobby T (Colman Domingo) make up lies about the contestants and paint them in the worst light possible, prompting the public to hate them, thus making it okay to enjoy their deaths. 

Unfortunately, the part of "The Running Man" that's supposed to be a fun action film gets compromised in the process.  Glen Powell does fine at being a sympathetic action hero, but the script has some fundamental issues.  It's too long, it's repetitive, and the ending has every sign of trying to shoehorn a happier ending into the movie at the last minute.  Ben Richards has encounters with a lot of different allies and foes over the course of the game, including Michael Cera, Lee Pace, Emilia Jones, Karl Glusman, Daniel Ezra, and William H. Macy.  Some of these are a lot of fun, but there's a curious lack of the kind of inventive, idiosyncratic action sequences that Edgar Wright is best known for.  The action's not bad, but there are only two sections where Wright really feels like he's letting loose, and the rest are pretty generic.  The tone is also frequently a little too dark and dour - too much "Minority Report," and not enough "Robocop."  The movie does some things well, and I absolutely think it's worth seeing, but this is not the "Running Man" reboot or the Edgar Wright blockbuster I think most of the fans were hoping for.  

I also want to say a little bit about "Now You See Me: Now You Don't," which is the third of the "Now You See Me" films.  Ruben Fleischer is in the director's chair this time, and we have a quartet of new screenwriters, who actually manage a halfway decent story.  It's still not much of a story, but at least it's not the complete bungle that the first one was, and has more interesting stakes than the second.  Every member of The Four Horsemen magician team from the original film is back for this one, including Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Merritt (Woody Harrelson), and Jack (Dave Franco), plus Isla Fischer as Henley, who sat out the last installment.  They're joined by a trio of young up-and-comers, Bosco (Dominic Sessa), June (Ariana Greenblatt), and Charlie (Justice Smith), with the goal of stealing a very big diamond from a two-faced South African mining heiress, Veronika Vanderberg (Rosamund Pike).

The "Now You See Me" films are full of impossible magic tricks that aren't all that impressive, because nearly all of them are accomplished with basic editing tricks and CGI.  However, they're still fun to watch because they're executed with a lot of theatrical style and bombast, and the actors get to play big and broad.  This time the character dynamics involve a lot of intergenerational sniping between the two teams - the Jesse Eisenberg and Dominic Sessa animosity is amusingly dorky - and the Horsemen have been split up for a long time due to some offscreen drama.  There are a lot of secrets to be revealed and a big twist, of course, but this one played fair, and did the setups and payoffs properly.  It was clunky and predictable, but I appreciate the effort.  

I don't know that I need more of these, especially as the franchise seems to be trying to set itself up as "The Fast & The Furious" with magicians, but the movies are pleasantly diverting enough that I don't mind if they stick around.

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How We Got To "Twisted Wonderland"

As someone who knows way too much about Disney, I've watched the uses of Disney IP change and adapt with the times.  Disney has branding that is so strong, it can be applied in all sorts of interesting ways.  Shared universes based on the classic Disney animated films have been especially prevalent over the last decade or so, with IP like the "Descendants" movies, the "Once Upon a Time" franchise, and the "Kingdom Hearts" games.  Recently, I stumbled across one that I wasn't familiar with - "Twisted Wonderland," which is a mobile game that looks very un-Disney at first glance 

In "Twisted Wonderland," the player is transported to Night Raven College, a magical academy where the students are split into seven dorms, each inspired by a classic Disney villain - The Evil Queen from "Snow White," The Queen of Hearts from "Alice in Wonderland," Hades from "Hercules," Scar from "The Lion King, " Jafar from "Aladdin," Maleficent from "Sleeping Beauty," and Ursula from "The Little Mermaid."  The story and character designs are by mangaka Yana Toboso, best known for the "Black Butler" series.  All of the characters are male, which strongly suggests that the intended target audience is girls and young women.  As you navigate through the school year, following the Night Raven students on their adventures, the main goal seems to be collecting up all the various cute guy characters and digital cards that feature them.     

There's a whole genre of games like this, known as gacha games, which are often built around lootbox mechanics and character-based collectibles.  The most popular titles like "Genshin Impact," "Honkai: Star Rail,"  and "Zenless Zone Zero" have millions of players and are especially popular in Asia.  It's no wonder that Disney wanted to get involved.  "Twisted Wonderland" launched in Japan in 2020 and did well enough that an English language version followed in 2022, along with the manga and anime adaptations.  But what I find so fascinating about "Twisted Wonderland" is how peripheral the use of Disney IP is in this game.  The characters are overwhelmingly original creations, with names like Azul Ashengrotto and Riddle Rosehearts, instead of variants of familiar Disney characters, like the ones in "Disney Heroes Battle Mode" or "Disney Mirrorverse."  But looking at other gacha games, there's a very obvious template for success here, and Disney is clearly trying to appeal to the existing audience.

Though the Disney villains are referenced frequently, and clips of their movies are used in the anime, none of them actually appear as characters in "Twisted Wonderland."  The only Disney character I spotted in the first three episodes of the anime series was the Magic Mirror from "Snow White," who is responsible for the player being brought to the "Twisted Wonderland" world, but doesn't do much else.  

Where the Disney influence is the most obvious is the character and environment designs.  The students from Maleficent's dorm all wear hats that resemble her horns.  The ones in Hades' dorm have his flaming blue hair, and the Queen of Hearts' dorm features a pack of characters named and designed after playing cards in her color scheme.  Others aren't so obvious - the trio from Ursula's dorm are very vibes based.  

The villains are referred to in-game as "The Great Seven," and the students revere them, but also ascribe various qualities to them that don't square with what we know.  Ursula is described as a "benevolent" wish-granter.  Hades has somehow inspired a dorm dedicated to the most technologically minded students.  The worldbuilding seems to be based on the idea that this is an alternate universe where the ruling  villains managed to create a series of fairly functional magical kingdoms despite being baddies.  There are Disney Easter eggs everywhere, and occasionally the characters will end up in places like the Seven Dwarves' mine.  Several minor and background characters are also based on other Disney villains, like the gym teacher who looks suspiciously like Gaston from "Beauty and the Beast."

It's fascinating to see the approach that was taken to adapt Disney IP to something as aesthetically different as a gacha game.  I have so many questions about the creative choices, like why these particular seven villains were chosen, while other fairly popular ones like Captain Hook were not.  Is it because all the ones in the game are magic users, except Scar who's there for the Furries?  Why theme everything after Disney villains in the first place, rather than Disney heroes or Tokyo Disneyland regions?

I know some of you are noticing that I haven't mentioned whether I think "Twisted Wonderland" is any good.  Well, after watching a few playthrough videos and three of the available anime episodes, the answer is that "Twister Wonderland" definitely isn't aimed at me.  Like most recent Disney multiversal media, I'm too old for it, and way too cynical to take it at face value.  However, the implications from an IP management standpoint definitely have my attention.

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