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.

RageLite review - X-men Dark Phoenix

The X-men films have been mixed at best in terms of quality, but I’ve been entertained watching them, I hoped it would end on a high and whilst I’ll get to New Mutants at a later date, let’s look at the final main-line X-men film, Dark Phoenix.

So, Brett Ratner and Brian Singer have both been implicated as perpetrators of sexual assault. Bet that makes looking back on the X-men fun. Personally, I would’ve brought back Matthew Vaughn but for whatever reason, they decided to elevate Simon Kinberg to director. He has plenty of experience with the X-men, having been involved with writing Days of Future Past and Apocalypse, as well as The Last Stand and Fant4stic, those triumphs of cinema.

Still, Kinberg acknowledges that studio interference with The Last Stand led to the story not being a good retelling of the Phoenix saga, and wanted to give it a try with more creative freedom. And then the studio got involved again, stopping his initial plan for a 2-part movie after the relatively underwhelming performance of Apocalypse.

The entire ending was reshot as the studio felt it was too similar to Captain Marvel. Speaking of which the villains had to be changed because of Captain Marvel too, creative freedom ladies and gentlemen.

So does this movie deliver… no, it doesn’t… let’s dig in and see why not.

Netflix Retrospective - Jessica Jones Season 3 Episodes 9-10

 2 more episodes of Jessica Jones, let’s see how things progress.

Praise4Media #71 - Sonic the Hedgehog

Haven’t done a lot of Praise4Media this year, though I haven’t done a lot non-retrospective long reviews period. Chalk that down to a very busy year. Maybe the day will come when I retire Rage4Media and Praise4Media reviews entirely to focus on retrospectives and shorter reviews but that day is not today.

I don’t have any real history with Sonic. He’s that blue hedgehog who likes to collect rings in 2D and later 3D platformers and some other sh*t. I only really got into Crash Bandicoot with the n-sane trilogy and Jak and Daxter I got into much later than the more combat oriented Ratchet series.

But I am not unaware of the reputation of video game movies being dire trash. From the abysmal attempt at a Super-Mario bros movie to the mediocrity that was the Ratchet and Clank movie. Still, there have been some good ones of late. The Tomb Raider movie felt faithful, Detective Pikachu was a blast and Rampage, I still like Rampage too.

Then we have the idea of transforming characters from a cartoon aesthetic into the modern world, a trend I don’t really understand. Alvin and the Chipmunks wasn’t bothered by it because it was just an aesthetic change, but the Smurfs and more recently the Tom and Jerry Movie (apparently, I haven’t seen it) suffer from putting focus on human characters not from the original source material.

Sonic the Hedgehog follows a similar format, putting Sonic in a human world and having half the focus being on a human character. There was controversy pretty quickly with his design which had a complete and expensive overhaul following fan backlash. And I’ve seen the trailer, I do see why. When you have a CG character not bound by the laws of looking realistic, find a way to make it expressive.

Made on around a $90m budget, the film grossed around $320m. Not bad as it released in February 2020, weeks before everything went nuts with Covid. The film has received a moderate critical praise with a 62% Rotten Tomatoes rating, but rated highly with audiences giving it a 92% RT rating.

Netflix Retrospective - Jessica Jones Season 3 Episodes 7-8

We’re taking another look at Jessica Jones, they can’t get Sallinger on much so far but we’re only 6 episodes in, let’s dive into episodes 7-8

Pixar Playlist #19 - Coco

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

Well, we’ve finally got to Coco. Cultural awareness is difficult. We are presented with it in our day to day lives but generally only at a surface level. You talk to people with difficult experiences to you all the time, but actually explaining those experiences is another matter. What I’m saying is I understand why this film was difficult to write.

Lee Unkrich had been working at Pixar since the beginning as an editor on Toy Story. He’s had a role in pretty much every Pixar film up to 2020’s Onward. He made a debut not as a director but as a writer with Toy Story 3, which is a firm ground. He’s been in the senior creative team for every film since (and with WALL-E and Up also) but he was the main writer of Coco, an idea he’d been developing since 2010.

But importantly, he’s not from Mexico, in fact at the time none of the creative team were. Still, this is Pixar so exhaustive research is a given. The team made trips to Mexico to absorb its art and culture. And of course, the big draw. Day of the Dead. Day of the Dead is commonly used in film as set-dressing. There is an appeal of big crowds and costumes and parades and the like. It’s a bit cliché and oftentimes annoying, but Coco wants to draw to a deeper meaning behind it all.

But cultural appropriation is a tricky subject and Disney decided to make this a public debate by attempting to trademark "Día de los Muertos" (Day of the Dead in Spanish) for merchandise. How come no-one in their marketing department could tell that’s a bad idea? I can tell that’s a bad idea. Naturally they backtracked pretty quickly and changed the title to Coco, so let's hope the rest of the film is good.

Netflix Retrospective - Jessica Jones Season 3 Episodes 5-6

We’re back with Jessica Jones, last we left off, we knew who our main villain was and Hogarth decided to have some devastating information made public. Let’s see where things go from here.