timepiececlock

I'm underwhelmed. Is that it?

It ended on a weird note, and I feel like something's missing. I'm disappointed primarily with Penny's end; it didn't seem to serve any purpose, and nothing came from her dying that couldn't have just as easily come from her rejecting Billy. I was hoping for some sort of surprise at the end, but it just...ended.

Act II was the best of the three parts. I loved Act II. And I liked the opening bits of Act III-- Captain Hammer's cringe-worthy song, and Dr. Horrible's song was interesting too in an arty sort of way. But after the freeze-ray unfroze... everything kinda went to pot. I'm not angry or heartbroken like a lot of people on my flist... I wanted to eat pie ~~tragedy~~, but when I saw what they put in the pie I lost my appetite. Even if the end result SMELLS good and LOOKS good... I still know what they put in it.

I feel like there must be another three minutes somewhere that I skipped, or something. And what are we supposed to take from the fact that it ends with Billy looking at the video blog instead of Dr. Horrible?

Captain Hammer's breakdown reminded me a lot of that one scene in Death Proof.

Disappointing ending aside, I did like:

-NF's over the top acting
-Dr. Horrible's red lab suit
-NPH looking beaten and destroyed, which he does quite effectively
-Bad Horse is an actual horse (that terrible death whinny)

I think it would have been more fun (and less annoying) if Penny had been Bad Horse, rather than as she ultimately ends up, the girl in the refrigerator.

I wish the conclusion had been more open-ended. Something that leaves room for the three-way dynamic to continue into a sequel. I don't really care about Dr. Horrible without Penny there as a contrast, because he's basically a boring villain without that emotional counterpoint that drives him to act.

I get that this was predictable... it was, in fact, EXACTLY like you'd expect a villain story to go. And I don't think I would have liked it if Dr. Horrible hadn't turned out to be horrible. I fully support the mythology of the villain's development. But this was *too* predictable, too much in-line with tradition. It was paint by numbers, whereas the first two Acts had a sense of flair and originality in delivery if not necessarily in chronology. I don't have a problem with Billy becoming Dr. Horrible or with Captain Hammer being beaten... I just was disappointed by the way it happened. It wasn't as fun as I was hoping it'd be, or as interesting. And Penny's character was wasted.

I wanted to embrace the tragedy, but... I was underwhelmed. I wanted a *better* tragedy.

I expected Billy to die. I think that would have been more powerful, except that it would have killed the chance of a sequel.

I'm kind of in the mindset where I want to pretend it ended with Act II, and that the REAL ending is Dr. Horrible making himself into a giant and squashing Captain Hammer. WAY BETTER ENDING.