Star Wars Month 2 - The Clone Wars Season 7 Arc 3 - The End

It’s Star Wars Month 2

OK, it's a few days late, sorry about that... anyway

And so far I’ve been pretty harsh on both the stories the Clone Wars incorporated into its seventh season, but in truth both of these episodes provide an important piece in the setup for the big finale. The Bad Batch arc had a heavy focus on Rex, his determination and loyalty coupled with his survivor’s guilt this late in the game.

Naturally the other piece is Ahsoka, who needed an arc to transition her from leaving the Jedi order to her place in this arc. It probably should have played out a little slower, across multiple arcs but they have 12 episodes so we’ll take what we can get. It really had to be these two that the focus was put upon, of the main cast of the Clone Wars we know how Anakin and Obi-Wan end up, along with most of the Jedi Order, and we know how most of the clones end up. The big bads like Grievous and Dooku are dealt with in the films, which is why they don’t appear in this season beyond a quick cameo.

As for Darth Siddeous with Ian Abercrombie no longer with us and Tim Curry… I think retired from voice acting, bringing him back beyond a cameo would be unnecessary. Indeed, they just use archived footage of Ian McDiarmid. Not that he would’ve been beyond getting to return since he voiced Palpetine not only for his incredibly forced appearance in Rise of Skywalker but also for season 4 of Rebels.

I think we’re getting off-topic. Basically, each of the main characters of this finale have had an episode to re-establish themselves and now it’s time for the big showdown.

Star Wars Month 2 - The Mandalorian Season 1 Episodes 7-8

 

We’re back with Star Wars Month 2 and our last look at the Mandolorian, how will this season end?

Star Wars Month 2 - Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

At the turn of the 2010s, there was a belief amongst game developers that single player games were a dying art. This in spite of games like Uncharted and the Batman: Arkham series doing great sales-wise despite being single player (Arkham Origins did have a multiplayer component, but we’re not mentioning that here) even my favourite franchise, Ratchet and Clank had a couple of multiplayer titles.

EA Games, a company that should immediately be followed by the Darth Vader theme, have held the license to Star Wars titles for a while, though at time of writing no longer exclusively. And whilst they’ve had success, the disaster that was the launch of Battlefront II in 2017 had to have an impact on the trend toward multiplayer. Follow that one with the critical and/or commercial successes of the Ratchet and Clank remake, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Red Dead Redemption and, of course, Spider-man, all single-player games from the latter half of the 2010s.

Anyway, Star Wars Month

EA had shut down previous efforts to create a single player Star Wars title, focusing primarily on its two Battlefront games, yes EA’s Star Wars exclusivity period had 3 titles in total which is kinda pathetic from one of the largest video game developers out there with multiple studios at their beckon call.

OK, so Star Wars: Fallen order was released in 2019, an in-canon Star Wars story taking place between episodes 3 and 4 because that’s where every in-canon Star Wars story with original characters takes place, until the Mandalorian came along anyway.

First thing of note is the game’s utilisation of the Unreal Engine. I hear there had at a time been a push from EA for their games to utilise their internally developed Frostbite Engine, as had been used in the Battlefront titles. It was designed for FPS shooters and was a poor fit for a lot of games, Anthem suffered for this.

Unreal Engines have housed a wide variety of games from the Arkham Series to Gears of War and from Crash 4 to Kingdom Hearts. So, a cinematic game that utilises set-piece moments isn’t unfamiliar territory to them and they’d likely have a deal of support building their own framework.

But let’s get to brass taxes and dive into the game itself, I’ll start with the story.

Star Wars Month 2 - The Mandalorian Season 1 Episodes 5-6

We’re back with our 3^rd look at season 1 of the Mandalorian, it’s been a pretty strong show thusfar, can it continue?

Star Wars Month 2 - The Clone Wars Season 7 Arc 2 - Ahsoka

 It’s Star Wars Month

The rest of the 8 episodes of this series focus around the Journey of Ahsoka Tano after leaving the Jedi Order back in season 5. Her appearance as Fulcrum in Star Wars Rebels showed that she survived order 66, and has a new pair of lightsabres, white. The explanation for those came in the Ahsoka Novel, which stated that she’d won a battle with an inquisitor, unarmed, I might add.

The book also I believe introduced the concept that a sith lightsaber is red because the Khyber crystal undergoes a process known as bleeding, where you channel your hatred into it, I believe there may also be murder involved. This has made its way into the comics, in one of the recent Darth Vader runs, but I don’t think Japan got that memo in Visions. Now, the canonicity of the novel is not necessarily set in stone, as the final story arc will contradict its opening but I choose to believe until I hear otherwise that only the beginning isn’t canon and what happens from there lines up with the show.

They did this again, contradicting the original Caleb Dume origin from Greg Weisman’s Kanan comic when he shows up in the Bad Batch. But back on topic, one thing you could see from the Rebels s2 finale was that Ahsoka and Darth Maul had history. And novel implied that Ahsoka was on Mandalore at the time of Order-66 and had just beaten Maul. Now some of this has been retconned by the upcoming episodes but the core ideas are still there.

We also have some fallout on Maul’s side, after his ascension to the Throne of Mandalore, Bo-Katan and several other prominent members of Deathwatch abandoned him, forming a splinter cell of their own. This 4-parter begins the setup that will lead to the siege of Mandalore and the fallout there.

Star Wars Month 2 - The Mandalorian Season 1 Episodes 3-4

It’s Star Wars Month 2

We continue with the Mandalorian, what do the relics of the Empire want with a force-sensitive child? Let’s dig into episodes 3-4 and find out.

Star Wars Month 2 - The Clone Wars Season 7 Arc 1 - The Bad Batch

It’s Star Wars Month 2

One of my reviews from the original Star Wars Month was The Clone Wars. Whilst season 5 had a good ending and season 6 sewed a few seeds for Revenge of the Sith, there were definitely some loose ends that could be picked up on. There were a few more stories that were in production but not completed, but were released as lost stories online.

There were 2 main stories released as such, the Crisis on Utapau, featuring the location where Obi-Wan fought Grievous in revenge of the Sith, featuring the debut of Anakin’s revised hairstyle to match the aforementioned film and was the first time I’m aware of that they mentioned the plan to harvest Khyber Crystals, something that’s referenced repeatedly now. The other was the Bad Batch, which we’re going to cover as it was remastered for the Disney+ Season.

Other works related of note include Son of Dathomir which sees the revelation that Darth Maul is in fact the son of Mother Talzin and his capture at the end of the s5 episode Lawless was part of plan to finally end her, which unfortunately does happen. Something else that happens is Maul’s crime syndicate starts backing out after facing repeated separatist attacks, not sure if that part’s still canon given what happens in his story this season.

Another is Dark Disciple, which was released as a novel, probably would’ve been the show’s most ambitious storyline featuring another attempt to assassinate Count Dooku by Asajj Ventress, this time with Jedi Quilan Vos. Ventress dies in this storyline although there was some ambiguity there if they wanted to bring her back.

As for Mandalore, a lot of it was up in the air, but it was revealed in the Ahsoka novel, and hinted at during Rebels that Ahsoka was directly involved in a Siege of Mandalore by the Republic and we find out in Rebels that she saw Anakin not long before the events of the film. Ahsoka’s future in the Clone Wars was less certain, with one rough-cut animated scene of her crashing a speeder bike.

OK, but let’s get to business, I don’t know what the rights deal was with Cartoon Network, who originally hosted the show but evidently, it’s been resolved as all of The Clone Wars is available on Disney+, and, exclusive to that streaming service, a final season of 12 episodes to cap off the show’s run. 12 episodes is not massive so a few stories that were planned still didn’t make the cut. Cad Bane, a long-running antagonist of the show, wouldn’t show up again until The Bad Batch spinoff show. There was an episode planned with him and Boba Fett. Plus, we aren’t getting adaptations of Son of Dathomir or Dark Disciple. Crisis on Utapau will also remain in its current form, no upgrade for that one.

Were these episodes always planned out to be the way they were, I don’t know. Maul’s control over the underworld post the war was only ever established in Solo and I think that may have caused them to backpedal on Maul’s underworld crumbling like it was doing in Son on Dathomir. But one episode that was planned from the beginning was The Bad Batch, why did this episode get a remaster, well because it has rampant spinoff potential. As of writing this, The Bad Batch has had one season and has been renewed for a second. It’s actually occupying a fairly unique period in Star Wars history, the stage of transition between the Republic and the Empire. Most stories in this period begin with the Empire fully realised.

But I’ve just spent a whole page of my review with preamble and usually this bit is only a line or two, let’s take a look at the first of these stories and see how Star Wars bids farewell to the Clone Wars for the third time.

Star Wars Month 2 - The Mandalorian Season 1 Episodes 1-2

It’s Star Wars Month 2

With the launch of Disney Plus just shy of 2 years ago, there’s been a lot of Star Wars content dropped for the platform. We’ll be looking at 2 of the primary series they’ve done as well as one of the biggest Star Wars games that isn’t an MMO.

So let’s start with what’s arguably the most popular of the Star Wars series so far, the Mandalorian. 

Set between the times of the main and sequel trilogies, we get to explore a time not heavily covered by anything other than expansion comics. This gives them a lot of free reign and with Dave Filoni at the helm, you know that’ll be put to use, let’s take a look at episodes 1 and 2 of season 1 and see where it takes us.

A Strange Halloween 4 - The New Mutants

A chance mutation causes you pain,

Eliminating all that you seek to gain,

Starting over becomes a must,

But not all around are folks you can trust

In likeminded people you might find your home,

A crew each with their own sins to atone,

But horrors abound like you wouldn’t believe,

Haunting your nightmares without a reprieve

It’s time to come face-to-face with your fear,

Else you friends won’t make it far from here,

Your nightmares made flesh or try to deceive,

It’s a Strange Halloween on All Hallows Eve

It’s time to look at The New Mutants, the final film from the Fox X-men line. It’s an X-men film that had a pretty troubled production. The idea was initially pitched in 2014, and was filmed in 2017, Professor X was originally going to be in this but was written out alongside various other x-men being slated to make an appearance, though these ideas were ultimately dropped. Fox was expecting for the film to undergo substantial reshoots, getting the film pushed back from its initial 2018 release date. But their efforts were delayed by the Disney-Fox acquisition and by the time Disney had completed their takeover, reshoots were no longer an option as the young cast had aged out of the roles. Still, Disney wasn’t exactly impressed with the product and did some work to increase the horror tone, which was more in-line with the original vision of writer/director Josh Boone.

Still, at this point the film had not been fully edited, and Boone was busy working on a Steven King adaptation, so he brought on editor Andrew Buckland to finish the film. The film was set to be released in March 2020 but a little thing known as COVID-19 saw it delayed yet again to August. Even then, this was Disney knowing this wasn’t going to be successful and cutting their losses.

And they may have been right, the film got a pretty bad 35% Rating on Rotten Tomatoes and whilst it may have more outside of a pandemic, it made only $47m on it’s near $80m budget. Don’t think it would’ve been that successful either way, so let’s take a look and see what I thought…

A Strange Halloween - Addams Family Values

A family of quite a disturbing design,

Perturbing, cooky and hardly benign,

But their status quo is about to change,

A baby can make things really deranged

Their family values are put to test

As they show their worst and their best

The Addams’ family film yet to be seen

Will be covered next on a Strange Halloween

This took a trip to a second-hand store to get a copy of, it was Netflix last year but no such luck this year  just the original and the animated one (note: it came back onto Netflix just days after I initially wrote this review - talk about bad timing).

Anyway, Addams Family Values is the sequel to the 1991 film. It released in 1993, I don’t have a lot to say about its production, only that regrettably the signs of Raul Julia’s ill health that would eventually lead to his death had already begun to show at this point. The film had a $47m budget, hoping to capture the same success the first one had but it wasn’t to be, the film floundered making only $48.1m back at the box office. That said, the critical rating was slightly higher than its predecessor. Did the film work for me, well let’s take a look?

Netflix Retrospective - Pacific Rim: The Black Season 1 Episodes 4-7

We’re taking another look at Pacific Rim: The Black

A Strange Halloween 4 - Happy Death Day 2U

A birthday is special, a magical time

But the forces of science have their own dark design

One push of a button from those with a brain

And you live this day again and again

A psycho in the shadows is in for the kill

But a slice of temptation will test your will

In many a dimension this day will be seen

As we do now on A Strange Halloween.

Netflix Retrospective - Pacific Rim: The Black Episodes 1-3

So, I guess it’s time to talk about Pacific Rim again. I love the two movies but I realise the sequel is divisive. I never thought the first one took itself too seriously, but a lot of people criticised the sequel in particular for being too dumb. That and killing the only returning character in the first act probably soured a few people too.

Still, giant robots fighting monsters is a concept that will never get old, especially in Japan. So we get another clash between Jaegers and Kaiju in Pacific Rim: The Black. The developers here are Greg Johnson and Craig Kyle, who also co-developed Wolverine and X-men which I covered way back. The show has a 2 season order from Netflix, though the seasons themselves are only 7 episodes, so for the next two weeks, let’s take a look at what the show has to offer.

A Strange Halloween 4 - The Addams Family (2019)

A family that’s mysterious and cooky to the end

Their antics drive their neighbours round the bend

But change can shake things to the core

You can choose to embrace it or show you abhor

A mansion of misfits, shunned by the light

Does not protect them from internal strife

A perfect reflection is yet to be seen

As we continue A Strange Halloween

After Addams Family Values, which we will be getting to, disappointed at the Box Office, the Addams family franchise was left dormant. In 2010, Illumination entertainment, best known for the blight on humanity otherwise known as the Minions, were working on creating a stop motion Addams family project, certainly an interesting take. Tim Burton was set to direct but for whatever reason it fell through. In 2013, MGM, now owners of Orion pictures, the studio behind the 90's films, announced it would be making an animated take on the cooky family.

Now, MGM has a long history of producing animation, being the studio behind the original Tom and Jerry shorts, among others but their production of late is fairly slim pickings. They’re certainly not on the same level as something like Disney or even Illumination. CG is certainly a relatively new field for them, and they were only given a $23m budget for it. Still, the film was commercially successful, earning back $203m, but it divided critics with only a 44% Rotten Tomatoes rating

So, how does this animated Addams family show up? Let’s take a look.

Disney+ Retrospective - Love, Victor Season 1 Episodes 7-10

OK, we’re a go for one last run through Love, Victor. Will Victor find himself this season? Let’s take a look.

A Strange Halloween 4: The Addams Family

It’s back, muhahahahahahahahaha

A family of misfits, who embrace the macabre

And all things that are odd, strange and bizarre

Starting in artwork but moved to the screen

It’s an opening chapter of a Strange Halloween

The Addams family was created as a series of single panel comics by artist Charles Addams in 1938. It is no stranger to adaptation, receiving a TV series in the 1960s, with a TV movie loosely attached, an animated series in 1973, and an upcoming Netflix series helmed by the guy who was born to direct this franchise, Tim Burton. But we’re looking at the cinematic releases, starting with the 1991 film. [I won’t be covering the animated sequel, as it’ll only just have released]

The film has a notoriously troubled production, with several rewrites, and directors of photography putting the film $5m over-budget. Orion Pictures, who produced several classics such as Silence of the Lambs were sadly already in financial difficulty, sold the North American distribution rights to Paramount. And for what it’s worth, they and the international distributers MGM (who would go onto buy Orion Pictures) got a good deal out of it, the film made $190m on its $30m budget.

Disney+ Retrospective: Love, Victor Season 1 Episodes 4-6

Alright, we’re back for a second look at Love Victor. Pilar’s discovered a devastating secret and Victor’s love life continues to be complicated.

Pixar Playlist #21 - Toy Story 4

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

I thought Toy Story 3 had a perfectly fine ending and that extending it further would likely result in an inferior product. I’m glad to have been proven wrong.

Toy Story 4 was not immediately greenlit after the success of Toy Story 3, they let it linger and eventually someone came back with an idea that could work and it was greenlit. Toy Story is still one of their most popular franchises and those keep the lights on.

The film stuck with the budget as the third at $200m, and was positively received, scoring an average 8.3/10 with 97% of critics reviewing it favourably. The film also grossed more than $1bn at the box office making it another success under Disney’s belt for 2019. So where do I rank it, well, let’s take a look.

Disney+ Retrospective: Love, Victor Season 1 Episodes 1-3

I have said before how much I enjoy Love, Simon both the book and the film and at the time I pointed out there was a series by the same people taking place in the same world that had my interest. It was originally going to come out on Disney+ but some content issues, apparently related to the consumption of Alcohol had Disney deem it not Family Friendly enough for the Platform and it got relocated to Hulu, Disney’s other streaming service. But the UK does not have Hulu, and Disney has a plethora of adult content that it can use to squeeze more money out of us gullible watchers, so came the launch of the STAR (not to be confused with STARZ, co-producers of the awful Torchwood: Miracle Day) the adult section for Disney Plus where Love, Victor (and for some reason not Love, Simon) eventually found its way.

I was originally going to review High School Musical: The Musical: The Series but ultimately decided that the show is more fitting for a series retrospective, as the focus is on comedy and less so a story, something I’ll touch upon when I eventually review it. But Love, Victor has the same number of episodes and a similar episode length so let’s get to it.

But before we do, a couple of pre-review bits: I have now read Leah on the Offbeat and it did, I don’t know about ‘fix’ her but it made me see Leah in a better light. The downside of this is Nick kinda got the shaft. Love, Creekwood, a recent entry that supposedly serves as a prelude to this show, (something I will get back to) barely features him at all.

Also, a few corrections from my Love, Simon review, only Bram (Blue’s) email was book accurate. The book and the film both take place between September and February, though my criticism of the Anniversary plotline still stands.

So, let’s dig into Love, Victor and see what this show does.  

RageLite review - Knives Out

I’m not going to sugarcoat this, I freaking love The Last Jedi.

After a movie that felt far too safe, it was nice to see a Star Wars film that took creative risks, the visuals are incredible and it had interesting pathos and themes. The problems, though often landing at Rian Johnson’s feet, stem from the higher ups having no idea what they’re doing and not having a creative framework in place for the story. It’s no wonder The Rise of Skywalker back-peddled so hard on it. It’s not faultless, of course, but it actually does have me excited for a film trilogy where Rian Johnson can plan it start to finish.

But of course, I know others don’t see it that way, they see Rian’s attempts to subvert expectations to be frustrating and to an extent I understand that. Still, let’s take him away from an established franchise like Star Wars and see if that method actually works.

Knives Out is a murder mystery story in the same vein as an Agatha Christie story. $40m budget, $311m at the box office, high ratings with both audiences and critics and a Netfix deal for 2 sequels worth more than the box office takings of this movie.

Netflix Retrospective - The Dragon Prince Book 2 (Sky) Chapters 7-9

We're back for one last look at The Dragon Prince as I finally catch up with all the pre-summer releases, horray? 

Pixar Playlist #20 - Incredibles 2

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

Sequels are a tricky business for Pixar, they’ve had some good ones, and some mediocre ones, and a terrible one. But this era of Pixar is continuing to pump them out and why not a sequel to a pretty popular film, the Incredibles.

The popularity of Superheroes in pop culture in the 2010s made a sequel to this feel more and more inevitable. But that is a double-edged sword as it enters into a pretty saturated market. They weren’t even safe in the animated department as Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse was due to come out in the same year, a film that would beat it to an Oscar in an uncommon loss for Disney.

But what they have to their advantage is resources. No-longer do they need to dedicate time and money for developing the physics since the technology already exists within the company, all the have to do is transfer all the models to the new software and update them. And speaking of resources, $200m is also helpful and far more than any other studio gives to their animated projects.

And the film was successful, raking in $1.2bn at the box office, this in spite of Disney swapping the schedule and losing a full year of development time. Let’s see where it fits on my list

Netflix Retrospective - The Dragon Prince Book 2 (Sky) Chapters 4-6

RageLite review - Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse

It’s the early 2000s and in an attempt to attract new readers with stories without decades of continuity, Brian Michael Bendis and a few other writers launch the Ultimate Universe, and one of the first stories to come out was Ultimate Spider-man. This Spider-man was younger, and more relatable to kids and teens, as was the original aim for Spider-man, but there came a time when this fresh start became old again, and the decision was made to kill of Peter Parker and replace him with a new Spider-man, Miles Morales. And whilst there were plenty of haters of anyone other than Peter taking up the mantle of Spider-man, Brian Michael Bendis and artist Sara Pichelli brought their A-game and the character was a hit with readers, so much so that when they pulled the trigger on the Ultimate Universe, he was one of maybe 2 characters spared.

Miles currently fills the void Peter once filled, whilst Peter in the comics is in his mid-late 20s, Miles is now the young Spider-man to appeal to teens. Him being bi-racial allowed him to appeal to non-white audiences who may not have seen themselves in Peter.

I have read every Miles Morales solo book, I followed him through years of Bendis, and am still following him now Bendis has moved to DC. His popularity has transcended the comics, he appeared in both Disney produced Spider-man shows, made appearances in Insomniac’s PS4 Spider-man game and got his own PS4/PS5 spinoff game. And of course, there’s Into the Spider-verse, a movie from Sony Animation Studios centred around Miles Morales.

I must admit, I was really happy to hear about a Miles Morales film coming out, but I was less ecstatic to hear that would also be a multiverse crossover with multiple spider-men and spider-women. I was concerned that with all the multiversal chaos Miles’ own story would be lost in the shuffle, but with Phil Lord and Chris Miller on board, I hoped we were in for something and, spoiler alert, we got it. This film won the Academy Award for best animated movie, and made $375m on a $90m budget, and got a pretty striking 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. Is it worthy of all that praise? Well, let’s take a look

Netflix Retrospective - The Dragon Prince Book 2 (Sky) Chapters 1-3

Ok, we’re back with Dragon Prince, Zym is now a hatchling, Rayla’s now free from her bindin, Viren’s up to no good and the quest continues. Let’s see where we go next with book 2: Sky.

Praise4Media #72 - The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

The original Lego Movie was great a fun nostalgia trip for adults and a decent mix of humour of set-pieces to advertise lego products to our younger audience. A sequel to this was inevitable, and Phil Lord and Chris Miller, two still popular writers, were on board. So why did this film flounder at the box office? What went wrong here?

The film had critical success, but not the same level as the first one, though still an impressive 84% compared to 96% for the first one. The drop off with audiences is a bit steeper with a 68% rating down from 87% but why is that? I have some theories but let’s start by diving into the story.

Netflix Retrospective - Jessica Jones Season 3 Episodes 11-13

We’re running down to the final episodes of Jessica Jones, Sallinger looks set to get away with murder, minus a scar or two, and Trish is beginning to set down a dark path in the wake of her mother’s death.