H'Elio, Anybody There?

So, I have a question, but it’s a bit of a complex one that needs a lot of context for it to make sense, so please bear with me.

I recently saw Elio and my overall impression of it could best be summed up in a single word: Solid. It doesn’t excel in any areas, but it doesn’t fall short anywhere, either. Another film I use the word “solid” to describe is The Last Starfighter, and Elio has a nice little nod to that film I appreciated. I do share the sentiment with a number of Pixar fans that their films simply don't pack the same punch as they once did. For me, I think they peaked with The Incredibles and they’ve simply never been able to recapture that special something. To be fair, I haven’t seen Coco, and that seems almost universally loved by all who’ve seen it. I also rather enjoyed Elemental, though that was more for its visuals and world building than anything else it had to offer. Even Lightyear had its moments despite being an overall lackluster execution of an ill-conceived afterthought. Maybe there’s a paradigm shift at Pixar, or maybe I’m just getting older. I mean, it couldn’t possibly be the latter, could it?

The criticisms of Elio seem to come in two flavors. One has to do with the art style being too similar to past entries, namely Luca and Turning Red. As much as I see the point, I can’t help but wonder if we’re not dealing with a little bit of cherry-picking here. Okay, Elio’s characters look like they could fit in right alongside those in Turning Red and Luca, but could you say that about Elemental, Soul, Lightyear, or Inside Out 2? Those all seem to have pretty distinct art styles from one another. Frankly, if Pixar movies are starting to blur together, it’s got more to do with the number of sequels they make than anything else. After all, why shouldn’t The Incredibles 2 have the same art style as The Incredibles? It would be rather odd if they took it in a drastically different direction. The same goes for the Toy Story films as any changes to the art style seem to have more to do with technical innovations since the first film came out all the way in 1995 than any creative decision from on high. 1995? Damn, I am getting older.

The other flavored critique of Elio’s reception is in its marketing. There didn’t seem to be any shortage of YouTubers and social media influencers insisting they didn’t even know the movie was out because they never saw any ads for it. Well, that’s easy enough to explain. Elio was delayed by almost a year because of the SAG/AFTRA strikes, so chances are most if not all of that initial marketing budget was spent pushing a date that’s no longer valid. Marketing a movie is expensive and it’s not easy to make sharp right turns or pump the brakes. If the movie’s release date is pushed further down the pipe, that’s more money Pixar has to ask from Uncle Walt to get the movie out in front of people prior to the actual release date. That said, this is where I start to approach the initial question I brought up at the start. I use YouTube the way most people probably use Netflix or Hulu or HBO Max. It’s rare for me to binge a show or series of movies on one of those platforms, but I’m rather embarrassed to admit how many hours I’ve spent binging retro videogame reviews or story time animations or ASMR content. My point is that I’ve been seeing plenty of ads and trailers for Elio leading up the release date. I don’t know where these people are getting this idea that they don’t know the movie’s coming out because I’ve sure been made aware the past several weeks.

So, here’s the question at long last: Are you guys all using adblockers?

Can you really complain about not knowing when a movie is coming out if you’ve cut off the mainstream means of marketing? How did you know about all the other movies you might have seen instead of Elio? I mean, I saw Superman the day before I saw Elio, and just like that film, there were plenty of trailers in front of YouTube videos. That movie doesn’t seem to be doing so bad in theaters, so what am I missing here? I don’t think the art direction critique has a lot of credibility, and the lack of marketing is only understandable to a point when you consider how many people are consuming content in the first place.

Pixar and Disney have released a statement effectively blaming moviegoers for Elio’s lackluster box office performance, insisting that they go out of their way to make these original stories only for people to not go and see them, all while complaining about there being too many sequels, reboots, and remakes. I don’t want to say they have a point, but I also don’t think they’re completely wrong. We turn out in droves for the latest entry in a long-running series, then say we’re tired of sequels, and finally add insult to injury by ghosting those movies that do try to be their own thing rather than part of some legacy.

There’s some study out there about how what people say they want doesn’t always match up with what they really want. It goes something like this, a group of participants were asked how they like their coffee, either rich and dark or milky and weak. Overwhelmingly, people said they liked their coffee rich and dark. However, when it came to their real world spending habits, overwhelmingly the drink of choice was milky and weak. So, what’s going on here? One conclusion drawn was that people said they liked rich and dark because it sounded more appealing in their heads. Maybe they wanted to avoid some social stigma of not being able to handle this adult beverage like adults. In the end, when it came to actually having to drink coffee in their daily routine, they went with milky and weak because they didn’t want to deal with the harshness of the alternative. Speaking only for myself, when I used to drink coffee, if I ordered from Starbucks, I would order a Tall Blonde. I did this for two reasons. For one, it’s fun to say. For two, I’d take that Tall Blonde over to the counter with all the sugar and cream, and add each until it tasted just right to me. In other words, I didn’t trust the baristas to know exactly what I wanted (I mean, I barely knew), so I took the basic foundation and built on it to my own tastes.

There’s no adding cream and sugar to a movie, not unless your theater has a liquor license and you’re really good at coming up with drinking games on the fly. Considering how expensive it can be to go to the movies these days and the economy being in and out of the drunk tank since January, your only real choice is to potentially have a bad time at a movie where you don’t know what to expect, or play it safe with a franchise that’s never let you down.

Much like my original question, the issue is complex and requires a lot of context to understand. Are people really unaware of certain movies coming out and saying as much, or are they sticking with what they know to avoid taking a risk?

Blue Snake Mambo (Zootopia 2 Teaser Analysis)

It was VH1's Pop-Up Video series that made me aware of the fact that there exist people in this modern and connected world who are not convinced NASA got anyone to the moon. It's also where I learned an embarrassingly high number of people do not think our sun is a star. When I started looking into the whole "lunar hoax" phenomenon, something caught my attention. One of the "gotchas" or "tells" that the entire lunar excursion was filmed on a soundstage is the absence of stars from the photos or the live video feed. 

The reason this caught my attention was because, in all my years of seeing these images, I had never noticed there were no stars. Needless to say, it didn't take me very long to figure out why you can't see the stars in these photos (though there seem to be a few points of light in the one pictured above from Apollo 14). Put simply, you can't see the stars because it's not night time on the moon when the photos were taken. It's literally broad daylight. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to see the surface or the astronauts. The sky doesn't look like broad daylight because the moon has no atmosphere to color the sky in the trademark hues of a day on the Earth. The story amongst the hoaxers is that the director (who may or may not be Stanley Kubrick, depending on who you ask) didn't like how the stars looked on set, so opted to turn them off, never mind the suspicion this might cause because surely people would expect to see the stars... and I never said this was a good explanation, just one of their talking points. 

Also, it's not like the Apollo missions are the first time we've seen images taken from the lunar surface. The Surveyor program started years before Apollo 11. The Soviets even took photos with their Lunokhod program. Did they also make the same creative decision on their own sets? Were they afraid people wouldn't believe them if they showed stars in an effort to out the Apollo program as a fraud? 

In the words of Ron White, "I told you that story to tell you this one."

Zootopia 2 dropped a teaser trailer a few days ago. Trailers, as a rule, feature scenes from the final cut of the film. Teasers, by contrast, often play by their own rules, mostly because they're shorter, but also because they're made earlier in production. I think the best example of this is Terminator 2, whose teaser showed an assembly line building an army of endoskeletons. This scene is nowhere in the movie and was made entirely for the teaser. Zootopia 2's trailer seems to have gone above and beyond regarding tailor-made content, almost acting like some kind of vertical slice of the finished film. We see a variety of environments as well as a rapid-fire slideshow of the cast, all framed by a trio of hamsters jumping around on a synthesizer to provide our soundtrack. 

The premise seems to revolve around a blue snake that's found its way to Zootopia and is being pursued by the poli---Wait a damned minute.  
...
...
Hold on. 
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...
Were there no reptiles in the first Zootopia movie? Wasn't there an alligator or a gecko or something like that, somewhere in the background of the nudist colony or the DMV? 

I'm seriously having a bit of an existential crisis here. 

Turns out, no, there were no reptiles in the entirety of the film. There were also no birds (which may well be our hint at a Zootopia 3). From what I could gather, the first Zootopia film was kept strictly to mammals as a way to make the worldbuilding and story less cluttered, letting us focus on the predator/prey dynamic. 

Now it seems we're putting a new wrinkle in the dynamic by examining the relationship between hot-blooded mammals and cold-blooded reptiles. Of course, there are plenty of herbivorous reptiles, that's not the problem. This new separation (segregation) seems to have much deeper roots than the eaters and the eaten. The only concern I have is whether or not we'll just be retreading the same ground as the first movie, only with new placeholders for real world issues. 

While I like the first Zootopia movie, I'm not the most arduous fan of it. It's well-made, very imaginative, and has a great message, but the best part for me was the dichotomy and tension between Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde. This time around, they're obviously on more friendly terms, especially with them both being police officers. I imagine they'll still have their disagreements, and we'll doubtless have situations of the fox's street smarts and the rabbit's book smarts. I only wonder if they'll have an overall smaller role in the main plot of the movie. 

In any case, this is a good teaser. I like that it's mostly original content as a good teaser should be. It gives us a good sense of what we're in for in terms of scope. It certainly preserves the absurdist humor of the first film. Moreover, it made me want to take a second look at the first movie for context. That's legitimately impressive. 

Star Wars Day 2025

In observance of May the 4th, this is my own personal recommended/definitive watch order of the Star Wars films if you're somehow still uninitiated or know someone who is. This is movies only, no TV shows, no videogames, no novels, just theatrical films so you can manage your watch time easier.

Revenge of the Sith
Rogue One
A New Hope
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
The Force Awakens
The Last Jedi

Honorable Mentions/Qualifiers:
Jury's still out on Rise of Skywalker. I like it a little better every time I see it, but not by very much, and I haven't forgiven it for how angry it made me the first time. I'll leave you to guess the moment when I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from yelling "Bullshit!" at the screen and ruin everyone else's theater outing. The Han Solo film is in a similar standing; The first time I saw it, I was not impressed, but upon a rewatch some time later, I enjoyed it a lot more. Overall, though, while it never made me angry like Rise, I find it a very uneven movie. Basically, all the scenes with Han and Chewie are great. The rest of the film is a rather bland and uninspired heist movie. I've always had mixed feelings about Ron Howard as a director. Visuals aren't his strong suit and I think he trusts his actors a little too much at times, not really pushing the best performances out of them. In the best scenarios, you get someone seasoned like Tom Hanks in front of his camera, and you're in for a good time. In the worst, you put him in charge of some relative unknowns who haven't found their voices, and it's clear he prefers a hands-off approach with little to fall back on. This leads to actors looking a tad lost on screen, which at least is on brand for a young, fish-out-of-water Han Solo.

As for the two prequel films I left off the order, I should point out I'm actually something of a Phantom Menace apologist. However, at this point in the franchise's lifespan and with everything else we've been given to spend our time with, I'm okay with saying you can skip that one. Before Rise, Attack of the Clones was the one Star Wars film I actively disliked. Even then, I once made a list of 5 things I liked about it. I don't quite remember what they are anymore (I don't even think I ended up posting it to Tumblr which I originally wrote it for). Also, fun fact about Attack of the Clones: this was the first Star Wars movie to not be filmed on traditional 35mm film. It was shot on high definition digital video... and unfortunately, you could tell. I still remember when I saw it in the theater the first time, there was a fairly dark scene with Obi-Wan and Anakin on opposite sides of the screen talking, and you could see compression artifacts in the dark space between them. It was practically a checkerboard pattern of deep purples and dark grays, with each square as big as the actors' heads. Roger Ebert made a similar observation in his review, so I know my experience was not unique. Fortunately, the technology behind the transition from analog film to digital video, especially in projection, has gotten a lot better. It was certainly no longer an issue by the time we got to Revenge of the Sith.

Speaking of clones, I'm also not bothering to include the animated Clone Wars film, as that was really more like a pilot for the TV series that just happened to get a theatrical run. Thanks to a modest budget of less than 10 million dollars, it was able to make a fair bit of money at the box office, though still stands as the lowest grossing Star Wars movie at just shy of 70 million. For comparison, Solo made a little under 400 million dollars against a budget of 330 million and that was considered enough of a failure to get the Obi-Wan movie scrapped and reworked into a miniseries on Disney+. As a rule, studios tend to take about half of the gross (and budgets don't include expenses like marketing and promotion), so, depending on who you ask, Solo is the first Star Wars movie to lose money. The Mandalorian & Grogu is set to release next year in theaters. It will be interesting to see how it fares.

While this has been primarily a watch order list, I'll touch briefly on ranking the Star Wars films, most favorite to least favorite. I'm not going to give the full rundown; as I've said, jury's out on a few of them and it's sometimes hard to qualify what's a "least liked" and what warrants an "actively disliked". In any case, it would be a tier list, rather than assigning each movie a unique ranking number. For example, I love Last Jedi and Rogue One. I love them equally, and it's for exact opposite reasons. One honors the past, the other looks towards the future, and I simply could never put one above or below the other. It wouldn't be fair. On a similar note, although A New Hope is not my favorite, I'd either have to leave it off the list entirely or put it right at the top purely on principle. Just as I respect Last Jedi for taking risks and Rogue One for sticking to what it knows, I respect A New Hope for taking that first step, walking so the rest could run. If I woke up tomorrow to find all the other Star Wars media apart from A New Hope had been erased from existence, I'd be very sad... for about twenty minutes, and then I'd sit and watch it for the umpteenth time and all would feel right with the world again.

May The Force be with you.

Maxed Out

I have officially allowed my Disney+ subscription to lapse following the closing of The Mandalorian's second season, and cashed in a free 30-day trial of HBO Max via my cell provider. Jury's out on if this was a good move, but there's no loss in either case. I'll renew my subscription to Disney+ when the new Star Wars content rolls out, but as far as keeping HBO Max past the trial period, that's less and less likely. For starters, HBO Max is about twice the monthly cost of Disney+. This puts it closer in the Netflix realm of streaming services, but despite having the Warner Bros. shield hovering over the operation, the amount of content present is simply nowhere near Netflix, and even Disney+ offered a pretty decent bang for the buck. To be fair, not all content on Disney's linear/terrestrial television channels like XD are simultaneously available on D+, namely the newer seasons of ongoing shows like The Owl House. I believe Ducktales had a similar arrangement as well, not unlike a movie having a theatrical run before coming to home media. It's intriguing that a show on basic cable can still make more money than a dedicated streaming platform. It's like that supposed paradox about food courts in malls, that while the leasing costs can almost surpass that of a standalone restaurant, the returns more than make up for it because of the location. 

Speaking of movie theaters and restaurants, I think the YouTuber ADoseofBuckley put it best when he said of the lockdowns, "I miss movies the most, and movie theaters the least." Don't get me wrong, nobody loves movie theaters more than me, but you can love something and still not miss it. In fact, although there was a time when I was going to the movie theater literally once a week with my roommate, I would hardly consider our venue of choice to be a movie theater. Rather, it was a restaurant that just so happened to show movies. Actually, that's a slight exaggeration as only two of their screening rooms had the full dine-in experience, whereas all the others were more in the self-service vein. Couple the restaurant experience with the fact that we took advantage of a promotional offer that meant movie tickets for new releases were only 5 dollars due to seeing them on an "off-day" like Tuesday, and this was on the whole a pretty sweet arrangement. We may have to deal with the occasional annoying patron, the kind who use their speakerphone for all their calls no matter the location. Yes, they put their phone away by the time the movie started, but the "call" still continued if that makes sense. Maybe it's a cultural shift or I simply have less patience for people lacking basic self-awareness, but the social experience of movie theaters has become painfully overrated. 

To go off on a minor tangent, let me tell you about the relationship between malice and ignorance. Thinking you're the most important person in the world and nobody else matters is obviously malice, while thinking you're the only person in the world is ignorance. I was on a return flight from visiting family when, as we were about to take off, I heard sounds from the seat behind me. At first, I didn't think anything of it. I figured someone just got messaged a short video or clicked on some ad and in the next 30 seconds or less, all would be quiet in time for the jet engines to kick in. However, it kept going. I realized someone was sitting behind me, laptop out and open, and was watching a movie or TV show using only the built-in speakers of their device. Ironically, if this guy was simply talking to the person next to him, even if a little loudly, I wouldn't think anything of it. You're in a small, enclosed space with people. You're going to talk to them, moreso if you already know each other. I guess it's because of the expectation. I expect people to talk to each other, hopefully at a reasonable volume that most other people aren't bothered by it, but effectively turning your seat and all those seats in a given radius around you into your own personal living room is not what I expect when I take a flight. Much like the previous notion of him simply watching something super-quick before putting his phone away or switching to another activity, I kept trying to give him the benefit of the doubt until the seconds became minutes. The reason I didn't say anything beyond the paranoid possibility of creating an uncomfortable atmosphere I'd be on the receiving end of for the entirety of the flight was because I couldn't find the right vocabulary to arm myself with. I don't mean I couldn't think of how to diplomatically inform this gentleman that I had no interest in hearing his favorite episode of Fargo. What I mean is I was having trouble processing the situation to begin with, much less coming up with a way to solve the problem in a way that wouldn't invite worse ones. The flight attendant came to my rescue, as well as that of everyone in that aforementioned radius. 

She asked, not said, but asked, "Sir, do you have headphones?" 

I love this woman. All these years later, and despite knowing her only through this small exchange within earshot of me on an airplane, I love her. Furthering my fortune was the revelation this one-man living room was firmly in the ignorant category rather than the malicious one. He didn't get uppity or haughty or stubborn. Whether he dug out his headphones or simply stopped the episode, I know not and care as little. I did however remain more than a little baffled at how it would never possibly occur to him that watching a movie on your laptop in the presence of strangers is more than a little bit... off-putting. Again, I don't feel this comes from a place of, "I am entitled to this!" but that's such a small sliver of daylight to navigate and I wish more people could understand that as nobody can read your mind nor travel in time to learn potentially redeeming context about your circumstances, all we have to go by are the results. When you do something that arrogant people do, you'll be seen as arrogant. It's that simple. It's hardly fair, but that's the price we pay for our agency, autonomy, and privacy. 

Going back to the social experience of watching movies, whether it's in a theater/restaurant or on a laptop perched on an airplane's tray table, I was legitimately intrigued to go all in on a full year or even six months (per their upsell that follows signing up for the 30-day trial) of HBO Max despite the cost. The Old Worm recently made headlines by announcing a bold experiment of releasing movies in theaters the same day as on their HBO Max platform. 

Behold, the Conqueror Worm

This sort of "simulcast" has been done before on more than a few occasions, though usually for smaller, independent productions that likely weren't banking on a return for the theatrical portion of their run. The results of these past efforts are largely inconclusive, as most theaters are either unwilling to sign up for this experiment, or are more likely not interested in the small, budget-friendly personal pieces given the deluge of blockbusters they've got to pick from. What's different about this run, besides the fact it was completely unplanned by anyone and everyone outside of the Water Tower's private conference rooms, is simply the scale of the operation. Wonder Woman 1984 is not a small movie. It’s one of their major blockbusters, the kind of blockbuster that needs a theatrical run to make back its exorbitant budget. The same goes for the other pictures on the list, including a fourth Matrix, a third Suicide Squad film (assuming you count Birds of Prey/Harley Quinn as number two), a second Space Jam, and a rebooted Mortal Kombat. That said, a big budget does not equate to a big welcome. 

I've already talked at length my reservations about the third attempt at Dune, so the ability to stream it in the comfort of my own home doesn't sweeten the deal very much. Most of the other films listed in the Dubba-Bee's 2021 vision net a similar reaction from me, with the sole exception of King Kong vs. Godzilla (and maybe The Suicide Squad, if only for a morbid fascination with the first film). However, that release date falls outside of the 6-month window by a few weeks, which I can't help but assume is by design. In fact, even Dune has been pushed back to later in the year. Its first delay was due to the Coronavirus lockdowns, so a delay of a few months was understandable. That's exactly what happened with WW84, previously slated for the summer of 2020. However, with it now being delayed by over a full year, coupled with Home Box Office's push for the 6-month plan, and it's looking like the service may not have as much confidence in their bold experiment as previously believed. 

It's an adequate concern for theaters to be nervous about protecting their investments. At the same time, the promise of an early release and a large screen is simply not enough for many people anymore. The dine-in add-on is a step in the right direction, and its only apparent shortcoming is the unexpected circumstance of a global pandemic. 

I'd say it's high time drive-ins made their best move for a comeback. 

Trix Are For Kids

There's a scene in The Matrix: Reloaded where Neo is greeted by a wide-eyed, nervous kid who thanks him for saving his life. This was brought up in a review at the time as a point of criticism, complaining that albeit this is the first time he's appeared, everyone acts like they already know him. 

For background, between the first and second Matrix films, there was a collection of animated shorts produced, collectively called The Animatrix. One story centers around a teenage boy who is becoming disenchanted with his humdrum daily life, not unlike Neo himself in the first film. Short story made shorter, the kid is freed of The Matrix, thanks in no small part to Neo's team. 

The criticism about the kid's "sudden" appearance strikes me as odd and, were I more of a cynic, was more of a pointed statement about Warner Bros. marketing of the Matrix franchise
I don't recall if I saw Animatrix before Reloaded, but here's how I think I would have interpreted the scene had I not. Neo is The One, a prophesied messiah who will turn the tide in the war against the machines. Obviously, someone like this is going to have fans. This kid is just one of those fans. He approaches Neo, thanks him for saving his life, Neo graciously accepts the thanks and the kid goes on his merry way. Neo is visibly uncomfortable at the adoration, and Trinity comforts him by telling him he's given hope to many.
The point is the kid is a face in the crowd. Actually, he's more like the face OF the crowd, the crowd being all those people who look up to Neo. It doesn't matter who the kid is in the grand scheme of things. That he has a small and mostly self-contained backstory in no way should work against his role in the film proper. In fact, there are several new faces in Reloaded who did not appear in any of the Animatrix shorts, yet everyone in the story already knows who these people are. So, why was there so much scorn and ire for this superfan's 15 seconds?
It's one matter to say a book is better than its film adaptation, that's the nature of the mediums. There are things you can do in a book that don't necessarily work in a film, and vice versa. It's quite a different matter to say that if you don't like a film, find it lacking or otherwise unenjoyable, that reading the book will actually enhance your enjoyment because it will fill in all the gaps left by the mov---

No.

... Just... No.

They're called adaptations for a reason. They adapt a story to a different medium. If the book and film were supposed to be taken in tandem, then the film would be called a supplement. Sometimes I think that's why tie-in novels of movies are called novelizations. Hell, they're called "tie-ins" as well, that should tell you something.

Obviously, this is not to say once you read the book or see the movie, you've reaped all you can sow and never the twain shall meet. I love the film Under The Skin. I read the novel later. Which one I prefer is irrelevant as the film is an "adaptation" in the strongest sense, having virtually nothing in common with the book beyond the barest bones of the premise. 2001: A Space Odyssey has a similar standing with me. The book and the film are ultimately the same story, but told in very different ways. They are separate, but joined.

As I write this, there's one more episode in season 2 of The Mandalorian. It's been fun, but I worry about the longevity of the series. Season 1 played it safe in a good way, each episode essentially being a loving homage to a genre or trope, most notably "The Sanctuary" being 7 Samurai but in a galaxy far, far away. As a wise one once said, every author writes the same book, the craft being in how well you disguise that fact. 

Season 2 has by contrast taken more narrative risks, with a much bigger emphasis on the worldbuilding, calling back to not only the original trilogy, but more recent installments like the Clone Wars and Rebels animated series. While familiarity with these shows is not at all a requirement, it may begin to put holes in the "aesthetic before plot" philosophy that made Season 1 work so well. It's easy to upset that kind of balance. While shows are meant to grow over time, there's an old chestnut of wisdom from the late, great Stan Lee that comes to mind, "Every issue is someone's first."

In a way, Star Wars has had a similar history to the arcade industry. Once upon a time, the late 70's to early 80's, arcades were everywhere, and it seemed everyone loved them. A Pong machine was every bit as common a sight in a bar as a jukebox or a pool table. Nolan Bushnell insists he's met hundreds of couples who first met by playing Pong. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, the clock will inevitably strike midnight and the carriage turns into a pumpkin. A series of poor business decisions and an overall change in tastes led to the great gaming crash of 1982, which saw a number of arcades close down.

About 10 years later, two things happen: Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. Arcades were back in spotlight... for about a year. They drew in fans, no question, but the nature of fighting games (and more importantly their diehard fans) were largely unwelcoming to the two most important demographics from the pre-1982 heyday: women and casual gamers. Post-1993, the only arcade games that held any sort of broad appeal were either driving games or, at a stretch, gallery shooters.

Star Wars' trajectory went much the same way, right down to the timeline. Post-1983 the main series of films concludes with Return of the Jedi. It's well-received by critics and certainly brought in the fans like previous installments, but between George Lucas' interest in other projects along with a possible over saturation in the market of merchandise and spin-off media, it was clear the series had run its course. Fast forward to around 1991 and Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy kicks off with Heir to the Empire. Shortly thereafter, reissues of the action figures hit shelves, catching the attention of collectors. The Extended Universe as it's collectively known goes all the way back to Splinter of the Mind's Eye in 1978, but it's fair to say the early 90's is when it mushroomed into the massive... er, empire we know it as today. Much like the fighting game craze, this was a good thing... for about a year. The appeal was still there, but it was nowhere near as broad.

Interestingly enough, even Star Trek had the same problem. When the original series aired, science fiction had outgrown its reputation as appealing only to adolescent boys enamored with Sputnik and the start of the space program. This was in no small part thanks to Trek's noteworthy social commentary. That is, the sci-fi trappings were an aesthetic. The idyllic world of the Federation was a lens through which the goings-on in our troubled world could be put in perspective. By the time the Klingon Dictionary was published in 1993 (man, the 90's were really divisive times), it was more or less clear that the idea of the "casual" fan had become something of a dirty word. Sci-fi was now for sci-fi fans and anybody else who didn't want to sign up for the lifetime membership had to sit at the kids' table. That's mild hyperbole, but only mild.

This is not to say that having broad appeal to a casual market is inevitably a superior strategy for an intellectual property to take, only that it's different and, as a wise one once said, if you're going to eat tuna, expect bones. For comparison's sake, stand-up comedy has two main branches. There are those who punch up at the haves, and those who punch down at the have-nots. The former has many obvious examples, most with large audiences and whose very best enjoy a mainstream success. The latter is by no means taboo, but those few examples of making it work generally draw in smaller, but maybe more intimate crowds. There's an unspoken contract of sorts between the comedian and the audience that nobody is being put down before anybody else, that even the guy calling you stupid is speaking as much for himself as anybody. There's an overall feeling of, "We're all in this together." with both sides of the coin, but the proverbial "this" is what makes all the difference.

Disney has used The Mandalorian to push its new streaming platform, draw in that larger audience, the kind of larger audience that entails the kinds of returns on investment needed to put together a technically complex show like The Mandalorian. I don't doubt the "volume" or virtual set used for the series will see use by other properties (it'd be a shame if it didn't), but I think it's fair to say Disney may well be taking a loss on the show, probably a bigger one than it did on the Solo movie. The financial rituals of Hollywood are a curious case of byzantine bureaucracies and seedy shell games. I've even heard some factoid along the lines of, "No movie in the history of the industry has ever truly turned a profit because all the blockbusters are offset by the flops that outnumber them." I doubt it's that simple (complex?), but it is curious how a movie can absolutely fail to make any sort of impact, yet rarely hurt anyone involved, even directors, writers, and producers who bear the biggest burdens of all when it comes to the major creative decisions.

Even if the palace Uncle Walt built decides to drop the jet-setting bounty hunting samurai gunslinger with the bucket on his head and the slayer of frogs at his side, that will still leave us with 16 rock solid episodes of a show that will be enjoyed years later, whether it speaks only to the die-hards or pulls in the casuals.

Every episode is an entrance.

Jumbo Shrimp

It's not bad, but it's borderline forgettable and hollow. I'm hard-pressed to recall an instance of seeing a weaker story told with less conviction. All the ingredients are there. We're introduced to this big cast of colorful characters, and the half that aren't lost on how to play their parts only get maybe 5 full minutes of characterization out of the entire runtime. So, when our merry band of misfits all rally together to save the day, all I can think is, "and you guys are...?" 
The art direction is rock solid and the score is beautiful, but the story bites off more than it can chew in an attempt to pad out the plot of the original, which has now been reduced to a 20-minute abridgment serving as the opening act. The rest is equally hurried and scattered, as though bored with its own concept which at times feels borrowed from other movies. The pink elephants do make an appearance, but I doubt it will be long before we seen side-by-side screencaps of it and the opera scene from Revenge of the Sith. 
Of all the forthcoming live-action/realistic CG versions of Disney classics coming out this year, this was the one I was most looking forward to because it seemed like it was going to offer more than a scene-by-scene reenactment of the source material. Technically, I got what I wanted, using the original premise as a jumping-off point to tell a bigger story. Unfortunately, that bigger story is so thinly-spread and half-hearted in execution even the finale feels like padding, all half-finished ideas and tired platitudes. 

Full disclosure: "Baby Mine" still makes me cry. 

A Wrinkle in Time

A Wrinkle in Time was far, far better than I thought it would be. Between a literal life-changing stage play I saw as a kid to an almost painfully humdrum TV movie, I went in thinking this could go either direction (awesome or boring) if not disappoint and simply be bad. It's another case of the trailers not quite doing the film its justice. They tend to focus on the bigger names in the cast (Oprah Winfrey, Chris Pine, Mindy Kaling), who aren't even the leads. I can understand that from a marketing perspective, but it's a double-edged sword; most moviegoers these days can sniff out a film that plays it safe from a mile off. There's a saying in cooking that the first bite is with the eye, and trailers are the first bite of a movie. It doesn't help that as much as I like the book, A Wrinkle in Time is better known for its off-beat approach to sci-fi and quirky-yet-relatable characters than its actual plot. Taken on its own rather than part of a larger series of cosmic-fantasy reality-benders, it's a fairly straightforward Fish-Out-of-Water/Who Am I/Hero's Journey sort of affair. Again, that's not a bad thing, not as a starting point and certainly not if you've got a good cast to make you invested. That's the real strength of this movie; the main cast is awesome. This is probably the best ensemble of child actors I've seen since Ender's Game. You are genuinely invested in their plights, which are further hit home by the visuals. The book didn't dwell too much on its visuals, as it shouldn't, so it didn't garner a lot of expectations on this front, and by this point we're so saturated in fantastic imagery it's hard to stand out. Somehow, though, this film achieves it. It's not so out there that it's distracting, like its trying to buoy the rest of the movie, but it's still very inventive.

Only two things truly bug me about this movie, one's a nitpick that's in no way a dealbreaker, and the other's more of a question. Firstly, Aunt Beast is mentioned once and seen for all of 3 seconds. It's a somewhat creative look, but easily the weakest piece of art direction in the film. The stage play had furry starfish the actors could shift around inside to operate different limbs, emphasizing their non-humanoid form. Here, we have mammoths with spider-legs, seen way off in the distance... in a haze... before swiftly moving on to the next scene. Like I said, not a dealbreaker, and if the Ixchell had simply been omitted, I wouldn't have even cared. Speaking of omissions, notably absent are the twins. The Murry family is only Meg and Charles-Wallace. Granted, they didn't have a big role in the book, but they were important later in Many Waters. What I'm wondering now is if Disney is going to go ahead and make the other Time Quartet books (Quintet? An Acceptable Time is canon...ish? I'm spoiled on numbered spines, what's wrong with me?) are they just going to have the current collection of kids carry on and rewrite the plot to them, or are they somehow going to find a way to introduce the twins later, maybe as visiting cousins? The Time Quartet In Five Parts (?) was essentially Young Adult fiction before the great Hunger-Potter Explosion, when publishers didn't market these much outside of school book fairs, and the authors tended to play pretty fast and loose with overarching structures and deadlines. My point is the cynic in me fully expects Disney to try and do for the Time Quintaret as a franchise, but it doesn't look like they're taking any steps to do that, and while part of me is okay with that, it's a very odd strategy for The House Walt Built between Marvel and Star Wars. It's like I want more but I'm afraid to ask, if that makes sense.

Black Panther

Fish swim in water, 
birds lay eggs, 
and Marvel movies are good whenever they're not great. 

(tosses napkin on the plate and excuses self from the table)

I swear I'm not trying to be a grouch about this, and none of my critiques are meant to put the movie down. This is one of the better ones, maybe not Thor or the 1st and 3rd Captain America movies, but definitely better than Iron Man 2, possibly the only Marvel movie I actively dislike (if only because I haven't seen The Incredible Hulk, which is only because I can't stand Edward Norton). As for Panther, the extent of my knowledge of the character begins and ends with a miniseries written by Reginald Hudlin and artwork by John Romita Jr., and as far as that goes they nailed the character and lore, delivering on all my expectations. I'm glad they kept the outside references to the other films at a minimum save some cameos and flashbacks, keeping it self-contained (like Doctor Strange) while firmly nested in the overall timeline. I'm certainly glad it didn't pull an Iron Man 2 and grind its own plot to a screeching halt to tell me how great Infinity War is going to be. On the whole, my only true criticism of the film is that while it's self-contained in terms of story, it is all still a bit familiar, and beyond some awesome art direction (What The Last Jedi did for red, Black Panther does for purple), there's not a lot it brings to the table we haven't seen before. There's a little Cap here in the car chases, a little Stark there in the gadgetry department, and a dusting of Thor (or even Guardians) for some of the battle scenes. Again, this isn't bad, but I think sometime after the end of Iron Man 3 and just before the halfway mark of Guardians 2, I may have hit my point of saturation. We had no idea what to expect from Thor or Captain America, certainly not their second installments, and those pre-Disney Marvel adaptations like Daredevil or Ang Lee's Hulk had their issues, but at least their flaws were interesting, even experimental on some levels. Now, we've clearly found a rhythm and a rhyme you can marry to any melody and it won't not produce a chart-climber. I hate saying that given how close to the brink of death the superhero genre has been from time to time, but on the whole the nicest thing I can say about this movie is that if you've loved all the past Marvel films, this one won't disappoint, but if you're maybe growing a little tired of filling out the MCU Bingo card, this isn't going to shake up the game. 
Then again, as I've implied, I am one of those weirdos who likes Eric Bana's Hulk and Ben Affleck's Daredevil, so don't let my damning with faint praise deter you from giving it a shot. 

Betting On A Dark Horse (Venusian Radio)

The Star Wars Episode -- Way back when I first tried audiologs, I talked about the Star Wars films being released on Blu-Ray and the fan reaction to the new host of changes made to the source material, especially Vader's infamous "No!" shout being inserted into Return of the Jedi. While I might have been able to live with that (I've still got my DVDs), Disney's recent decisions regarding the franchise is going to affect the livelihoods of hard-working people in a rather cutthroat industry: Comic Books.