Netflix Retrospective - Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 8 Episodes 1-3

I guess it’s time to put Voltron: Legendary Defender to bed. 

Barring a couple of problematic elements, s7 was still a solid season of television heading into the 8^th and final season. With most of the other antagonists defeated, it’s down to Honerva aka Haggar to finish the job. And she may just have found her greatest weapon, as when we left off, Voltron was attacked by a giant robotic monster piloted by an Altean. Season 8 has its own share of controversies but I’ll cover them at the end, for now let’s dive into…

Disney Remake Marathon - Alice in Wonderland

I’m not going to be doing another 4 horror films for Halloween, you want a horror show, you can just look at the latest news or your twitter feed for that. I will still be covering season 3 of Stranger Things and have a Halloween special but for the most part, I’m going to be doing something else.

Disney live action remakes have been a part of society since the 101 Dalmatians remake, but it was 2010 with the release of Alice in Wonderland where it was shown they could make big money, resulting in a slew of remakes and oh my god, Disney, make it stop.

I’m not gonna be covering the 101 Dalmatians remake at this time, but I will be covering all the Disney Live Action remakes of the 2010’s. Oh boy, this is gonna be a rough ride.

We start with… oh f*ck, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. OK, to Burton’s credit, he’s not a bad director. For all the problems I have with the Michael Keaton Batman run, it certainly captured the gothic look I’d expect of a gritty adaptation of the Dark Knight, Beetlejuice was weird but fun and I did like Mrs Peregrine’s home for Peculiar Children but oh man is he the wrong choice for this particular aesthetic.

Tim Burton’s style is dark and gritty. Wonderland is a place of magic, colour and madness, only one of those really appeals to Burton. As for the original, and I mean the Disney original, not the book… It’s fine, it’s not really my thing, I prefer a story with a bit more meat to it, but I understand why that isn’t the case here, unlike some people, which I’ll get to in a bit. It feels like a 20-minute short, stretched out to 75 minutes. And if that’s what I think of the original, imagine what I think of the nearly 2-hour long remake, let’s take a look.

Praise4Media #68 - Scott Pilgrim vs The World (Scott Pilgrimage Final Level)

The journey was long and annoying, but now you get to see what it’s really about: The Destination. We conclude our Scott Pilgrimage with a look at Scott Pilgrim vs the world: The Film

At the helm here is Edgar Wright, who you might remember being the director of Baby Driver, I film that’s almost impossible for me to rewatch given the current allegations against the lead actors. His history at this point was Simon Pegg comedies, and everyone loves Hot Fuzz, right? Can’t say I’m a huge fan of it, honestly but… 

Wright is writing (ha) alongside Michael Bacall, who’s last writing project at this point had been a german comedy called Booker, which launched in 2003. The film started pre-production not long after the first volume came out, with Bryan Lee O’Malley involved at least as a consultant on the film, giving notes on his intended plans for later volumes.

That said the final volume of the book was released only a week before the film came out, and the colour editions didn’t come out till until 2 years later, so they were not used beyond the occasional notes in the final film. It’s also possible the film’s casting inspired some of the colours from the colour editions, as colour could only have been implied in Black and White. It’s also true that the film actually helped inspire some of the creative choices for volume 6, though not in the way you might expect.

Scott Pilgrimage Levels 1 - 6 (The Comic)

Dark times are upon us, I hope solace can be found in whatever media you’re consuming whether it’s dark horror like The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina or dumb comedy like Some Assembly Required, or intense violent action like… what’s going on outside your window. And whilst holding people accountable for their heinous actions is important, time must also be spent reflecting. On that notion, I invite you on a little journey, a Pilgrimage, a Scott Pilgrimage.

Yes, I took that title because Dominic Noble didn’t, sue me!

Scott Pilgrim may be known to some as the Edgar Wright movie, but before that, it was a series of graphic novels written and drawn by Brian Lee O’Malley. They were released in 6 anime style volumes between August 2004 and July 2010. As we begin the Rage4Media summer hiatus, I thought it a prudent time to give my thoughts and feelings on each volume before concluding with a review of the film. Unlike a certain Adaptation critic, I’m going to try and review the comics independent of the movie adaptation. I’m using the colour editions for this review because it was Black Friday and my family wanted to buy them as Christmas presents, the colourist is Nathan Fairbairn.

So let’s begin our 7-part journey with Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life.

Pixar Playlist #12 - Cars 2

Ladies and Gentlemen, whether you like it or not, the Pixar Playlist

And oh boy, we're at Cars 2

Pixar have had a long of run of financial and critically successful movies, their critical success would come to an end with this film, and it wouldn’t nearly strike the level of financial success of the last 2 films, despite the $200m budget. Let’s not be coy about it though, it probably still made a killing in merchandise sales, hence the existence of another sequel and various shorts and spin-offs.

So, why is this one so despised? Let’s take a look.

#78 - Teen Beach 2

One consequence of Disney owning just about everything these days, combined with Disney+ existing also is that I’m doing a lot of Disney reviews. And whilst the summer hiatus is gonna be dedicated to something a little different, I’ll be looking at Disney remakes in the fall, so this pattern isn’t likely to change, either.

But a few weeks back I reviewed Teen Beach Movie, a kinda self-aware teen musical featuring Ross Lynch and Maia Mitchell as teen sweethearts Brady and Mack. It was one of Disney Channel’s more popular outings so naturally a sequel was greenlit, released in 2015, 2 years after the previous one, this important for something I’m gonna come back to in the review.

When it comes to writing, Robert Horn is the only one returning, co-writing the story with Dan Berendsen, who had worked on other Disney Channel films including the Camp Rock sequel, whilst the screenplay was written by Matt and Billy Eddy, both of whom have very limited experience, Matt had worked on the 101 Dalmatians Cartoon in the 90s but Billy’s resume only really includes Invisible Sister, which Matt had worked on as well.

On the plus side, Jeffrey Hornaday has returned as director. So, what happens in this movie that pushes it into the bad category? let’s dive in and find out.

TV Retrospective - Austin and Ally

With the current state of the world being… as it is, Disney+ has much needed reprieve, more so than even Netflix. There’s always an air of quality to a Disney production even if it ends up being garbage for other reasons. I’ve really started to enjoy the more theatric Disney musicals, it’s why I’m reviewing the Teen Beach Movies, but in research for those I came across something else, a Disney Sitcom named Austin and Ally.

Disney is long famed for creating musical stars that go on to have pop music careers, Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers to name a couple of examples. But Ross Lynch, the actor playing Austin, already had some experience, he and his family (plus one other) had self-released an EP under the band name R5.

Far as I can tell, none of the other leads had musical experience going in though I would presume musical talent came as part of the auditioning process, especially given what they ended up with in the main product.

So why am I doing a single review of the entire show instead of an episode by episode retrospective? Primarily because it’s a sitcom. It’s the same reason I’m hesitant on doing the Malibu Rescue series, despite doing the pilot movie. I could break every episode down but doing that would be paramount to just explaining all the jokes. Whilst there are developments through the series, I wouldn’t call the show serialised, or even narrative-driven, so an episode-by-episode breakdown wouldn’t really work.

That and even with me drawing Daredevil and Reboot: The Guardian Code to a close, I’m still doing Dragons, Stranger Things, Jessica Jones and Voltron and I plan to do resume covering Young Justice, do breakdown for the final series of the Clone Wars, and there’s also candidates like High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, The Mandalorian, Titans, The Umbrella Academy, the Dragon Prince, not all of these are even set in stone, but there’s a lot.