Pixar Playlist #18 - Cars 3

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

And we’re back for one, probably final lap with the Cars series. It’s said that major franchise sequels are needed to pay for their more original projects but with Cars it’s always been less about the films and more about the sweet, sweet merchandise.

The end result is that Cars 3 was in production since Cars 2 came out, but evidently the feedback from the last film shaped their decision to do a story more akin to the original Cars. The team did their research on professional athletes and their stories.

In the animation end, the team was helped by some new rendering technology that allowed them to preview their animation. The film underperformed, earning $385m on a $175m budget, at best it broke even and managed a mere 69% with audiences and critics on Rotten Tomatoes. But Cars films have never been Box Office darling, their money is in the merch Where do I stand here? Well, let’s take a look

Young Justice Outsiders Retrospective - Episodes 7-9

We’re back with another run of Young Justice, more episodes done from memory, with a little help from the wiki summaries so again things may be out of order or condensed. Sorry, I only have so much time for these.

#84 - Lab Rats: Elite Force (Rage4Media 7th Anniversary)

It’s our 7^th anniversary.

Yes, I’ve officially been running all incarnations of Rage4Media for 7 years, I really need to get out more. And what better thing to review to mark such an occasion than a Disney Channel Sitcom from 5 years ago. I mean it’s not the oldest thing I’ve reviewed on an anniversary.

I’ve been hinting at this for a while, covering Lab Rats and Mighty Med in some of my longest reviews (this one's longer), it’s time to cover Lab Rats: Elite Force, the spinoff show of both Labs Rats and Mighty Med. The production credits go to Chris Peterson and Bryan Moore, the creators of Lab Rats. Initial alarm bells ringing that neither of the people behind Mighty Med have production credits, though Andy Schwartz does have a writer’s credit for a couple of episodes and was a consultant throughout.

The show lasted one season of only 16 episodes, shorter than any season of either predecessor, so I’ll be covering every episode. I can’t promise I’ll be as in depth as an episode-by-episode retrospective but I will mention every plotline this show has, even if they aren’t part of a story or character arc. Yes, I’ve said in the past doing this would be spoiling the jokes but some of these plots are so asinine I won’t give them the dignity as being classified as jokes.

Young Justice Outsiders Retrospective - Episodes 4-6

We’re back for another run of Young Justice and it’s happened again, I did the reviews then lost them, this time thanks to word glitching. I decided to have a go at doing these from memory and whilst the actual plot points are definitely from the episode, they may be a little out of order or condensed.

RageLite review - Rocketman

Back in 2019, I announced this as my favourite film of that year, we look at the tale of Elton John, or at least a stylised version of it, in Rocketman.

Taron Egerton had recently been in the absolute disaster that was the latest Robin Hood reboot, I may have to talk about that at some point but for now, it put his status as a leading man on a knife’s edge, the next film had to hit it out of the park. And a dramatized retelling of some of the interesting bits of one of the biggest popstars to come out of the UK, certainly an interesting choice but it’s not as if Taron Egerton had no experience in the field, he had previously a sung cover of I’m Still Standing whilst playing the Johnny in Illumination’s Sing.

The director is Dexter Fletcher, a guy who’s no stranger to musical biopics, having taken over from Bryan Singer as the director of Bohemian Rhapsody. Whilst that film, for all its flaws, was a smash at the box office, Rocketman had a lot more working against it. Simply put, to do justice to Elton John’s life, an R-rating was pretty much guaranteed, which would place it as a much more niche product compared to the PG-13 Bohemian Rhapsody.

There’s also the issue of Elton John being gay, an issue they couldn’t dodge because his love-life ended up quite entwined with his music, especially in this story. This would unfortunately put it on a blacklist for certain homophobic countries, who’s names I am going to happily drop. F*ck Egypt, F*ck Malaysia, F*ck Samoa and naturally F*ck Russia, though ironically it’s f*cking that got the film into trouble in the first place.

Still, the film only had a $40m budget, which was made back and then plenty, making $195m at the box office. And it went over well with both critics and audiences with 89% and 88% Rotten Tomatoes Ratings. Why did this beat out films like Endgame to be my absolute favourite film? Let’s take a look.

Young Justice Outsiders Retrospective - Episodes 1-3

 So, Young Justice Outsiders

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to talk about this show, the last time being way back in 2016, when I did an editorial one what I wanted to see from this show… and I’ll say I got 1/5.

My thoughts have shifted a little on Young Justice. It did an exemplary job in season one balancing the overarching storyline with its cast of main characters. By majorly expanding the team in season 2, it also really torpedoed the balance in favour of plot as opposed to character development, making certain characters feel like pieces on a chessboard. Outsiders, as I’ll explain, suffers from a similar problem, but I’ll get to that later.

What’s interesting is that fan demand and the launch of a DC streaming service lead to the announcement of YJ Outsiders in 2016, the show would ultimately be released in 2019, which is quite extensive gap, DC announced the show’s renewal literally days after the creators found out.

So minor changes before we get into it, James Arnold Taylor has taken over from Tim Curry as G Gordon Godfrey, who has also permanently taken over the role as the Flash from George Eads after voicing him in the season 2 finale. Could be a cost saving measure, voice actors are portraying multiple characters across the board this season, and there are other budget-saving measures as we’ll get into.

According to a source I can’t seem to find now, Logan Grove was likely off in the military at the time of Outsiders’ production, so Beast Boy has been recast with Greg Cipes reprising his role from Teen Titans (and TTG). And for what it’s worth he does a decent job.

I’ll be covering the first 13 episodes of the series now, with the hopes of doing the other half in the later half of the year. Part of the problem is that there’s no series purchase option on Amazon for the second half, if I wanted to buy the second half at present, I’d have to buy every episode individually and at £2.49 an episode (I live in the UK so HBOMax isn’t an option), I am not doing that.

RageLite review - Ocean's 12

It’s May, so let’s take a look at the Ocean’s Franchise again with its sequel, Ocean’s 12. With the success of the previous film, a sequel was announced but now they no longer have an old movie to remake so they’re on their own, for better and for worse. To handle this job, they got George Nolfi, a relative inexperienced writer, his only other film is Timeline, which was critically panned and a financial disaster. Still, Steven Soderbergh is still directing so there should be some consistency

Made on a $110 million budget, the film was successful, earning $362m at the box office, still less than the $450m the original made, but critics were far less kind to it, with only 54% finding it favourable, whilst scoring only slightly higher at 60% with audiences [has RT taken away the average scores, they provide important context] so what happened here? Let’s take a look.

RageLite review - The Lego Batman Movie

I wasn’t intending to do this one, but it’s a leadup to another review so here we are, the Lego Batman movie.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t enjoy the movie, far from it, but the reason I don’t review it is the same reason I haven’t done an in-depth review of a lego short since way back when I did Star Wars, there’s precious little to say about them. Most of the jokes in them are self-referential, either to the fact that they’re Lego or to various plot elements of the story it’s based on. They’re designed to sell Lego merch to children first and foremost. The Lego Batman is a good kids advertisement, don’t get me wrong here but its humour is satirical and it’s difficult to explain why I like it without also spoiling the jokes, plus unlike with the Lego Movie, there’s no overt real world allegory to it.

Still, it’s hardly surprising that Lego Batman would get a spinoff. Warner Brothers already owns the rights to the character, there have been 3 Lego Batman games and various Lego shorts based around Batman, plus Batman is still DC Comics’ most popular character. The film made a reasonable $312m on its $80m budget, not quite as much as its predecessor but enough to call it a success. And it has a pretty stunning 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with a 9.5/10 average score.

Netflix Retrospective: Dragons: Race to the Edge Season 6 Episodes 7-13

Note: I'm falling behind schedule, so here's a double helping of Dragons

We’re about halfway through the final season of Dragons: Race to the Edge, the season faltered in the last 3 episodes, will it be able to make up lost ground?