11 or 13?


Which is your favorite of the two?

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Eleven - it's the most tightly written, the one with the most consistent internal logic and, in my opinion, the funniest. I think both Twelve and Thirteen ultimately suffered from having to juggle too many people - in Eleven, every character has a clear job to do and while some are clearly more important and get more time in the spotlight than others, no character feels superfluous to the overall plot. That sort of began developing into an issue during Twelve, highlighted by the fact that for a lot of the movie at least one member of the team is "out of commission" at any given time, whether it's because they're not interested in being involved (Saul), they've been arrested (Frank - and practically everyone else later), or they're trapped in a duffel bag (Yen).

In Thirteen, it's reached the point where it's painfully obvious they've got more people on the roster than they know what to do with so you end up with several characters having what are on their own quite funny/interesting sideplots but overall not really adding anything - the Malloys' subplot especially shows heavy hints of this. And then they brought in even more characters on top of that. I kind of think it says something when there seems to be no clear consensus on exactly who the other 2 are to make the crew into 13. Plus, even though I think the overall story was tighter on this one than it was on Twelve, it feels like a shame to me that it's so similar to Eleven in terms of setting and basic story. Twelve, as choppy as it ended up, at least tried something totally different, and it does make me sad to think that the less-than-positive reaction to it convinced everyone they basically needed to rehash Eleven in order to make Thirteen. Having said that, there is a lot about Thirteen that I enjoy and I'm glad the series exists as a trilogy.

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11 is my favorite but I love the whole series.

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