I went to see Project Hail Mary yesterday, and thought it was pretty good, would give it an 8/10. Ryan Gosling did an amazing job, and the story had me hooked until the last stretch, where I felt the ending was a bit ho-hum. Not many blockbuster Sci-Fi movies tend to pull that off to be fair, though.
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That would’ve been better but still wouldn’t have fixed the other problems such as the not so great CGI, God I missed the practical effects in that. The orcs in LOTR are actually menacing, vile and dirty and they are clean and not frightening at all in The Hobbit. That dude Azog, terrible.
A friend of mine told me she actually loves The Hobbit whereas she falls asleep during LOTR and I’m like…….bruh! To each their own of course but still….
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I can understand not liking LOTR. As you say, to each their own. Saying you fell asleep watching it OVER The Hobbit is WILD though. There’s just so much padding in the Hobbit and so much nothing just to stretch out that story to fit the run time three times over. At least say you fell asleep during both sheesh. C-span has tighter scenes.
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I Swear
Wow, what a movie. This one is about Tourette syndrome and I thought this was one was extremely powerful and exceptionally well acted by the actor. Go see this.
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Maul Shadow Lord was amazing. Peak Star Wars for me. Without spoilers, what I really loved was the focus on a Sith who we know never gets redemption. Maul as a protagonist really shows us the tragedy of the Sith and all the traits of “falling to the darkside” that the Jedi warn about. You watch Maul and get that being a Sith, being taken by Sidious, has ruined his life, but you also know (especially because we’ve seen his end in rebels) that Maul can’t stop being a Sith. His need for revenge, pride, aggression, desire for domination, it all necessitates that he’ll never find peace. Kenobi puts it best (and since it’s not a spoiler for Maul: Shadow Lord and just a great scene I’ll link it)
There’s not a lot of visual media content that puts the Sith in the driver’s seat and their fallacies on blast like this. Often times when they do we’re like playing a video game where being evil is awesome or there’s some level of redemption at the end, but here it’s just Maul building his own tragedy and knowing no other way. That leads to some really interesting story beats. As everything gets wrapped into Maul’s chaotic Shakespearean tragedy of a play. I also love that it doesn’t feel like anytime was wasted. The pacing is slower for the first few episodes, but everything builds immediately on the prior episode (it’s fantastic for week to week watching (too bar I didn’t watch it week to week)). All in all one of the best Star Wars experiences I’ve had in a long time.
Late to the party on it but The Penguin was fantastic. Being a Batman fan it was nice seeing something both in that world and also a well told story.
It made a change the bad guy was just that - think they called him a monster and the scene with Vic at then end gave you no doubt of what he was. Constant playing out others for himself.
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About half way through the season of Spider-Noir and it’s SO well done. Cage is channeling Bogart/Cagney/Stewart perfectly. Also, there’s this little street kid in it who’s been so brilliant, I had to know why he seemed so familiar and…he’s the main kid from Weapons. That kid has quite the future ahead of him
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same. didnt expect anything, thought the concept was stupid. but this is really fun!
This seemed to come from nowhere and looks a bizarre concept. I’ll have to watch when next dip into prime. I was hoping a new series of terminal list would have been out by now to take the plunge.
The comic is pretty old by this point and iconic within that community. It somehow got popular enough to get into the Shattered Dimensions game, so I’m not too surprised that after Cage’s fan favorite performance in Spider-Verse they’re doing a proper noir adaptation.
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Spider-Noir was good, but ended predictably and in a familiar superhero fashion, I wish I hey had continued to take risks through the end to fully distinguish itself from the mainstream fare.
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So I last saw Mandolorian and Grogu, Mortal Kombat 2, and He-Man in theaters. Without spoilers and just quick thoughts:
Mandolorian and Grogu wasn’t a good movie experience for me. It felt like they just scrunched season 4 into an acceptable movie run time and went with it. Interviews I looked up after confirmed that’s basically what they did. The pacing was painful for a cinematic release and the budget not quite up to par with what Star Wars in theaters should be. It didn’t help that I fell off the Mandolorian in season 2, so the movie had a losing battle with me.
Mortal Kombat 2 was… a movie. It felt like they wanted to course correct from the first movie but also didn’t want to start over. They also didn’t spend enough time characterizing the new cast (especially Shao Kahn) so I didn’t have much attachment to it. There’s a big narrative decision they made which should’ve been held until like MK4 imo because after it happened I just felt like all the stakes went away and the sense of victory became meaningless.
He-Man wasn’t like… “good” (it had narrative and pacing issues), but it was a lot of fun. It was at its best when it went full unapologetical 80s Saturday Morning cartoon bull**** and didn’t bother to explain stuff. Skeletor was fun. I actually forgot that was Jared Leto. This is like the only time I enjoyed Leto in a movie. The acting overall had this air of awkward fun to it. Like I kinda got the sense these people were larping He-Man in the park, but like doing a really committed LARP and I enjoyed it for that. The movie looked visually fine and action was good (though some went on too long or had too much slow mo). I appreciate it using bright settings even though at times the CGI was really obvious. It’s a movie I’d actually watch a second time in theaters just for fun. The biggest issue was the pacing and when it tried to take itself really seriously in between the dumbest Saturday morning cartoon BS. The whole Earth section was painful and went on too long. It was fun.
A lot of people did not love the way season 2 of House of the Dragon left off, hell I was one of them. That said season 3 episode 1 might be the best episode that show has ever had. No spoiles, but just think Assasins Creed: Black Flag mixed with Dragon Age: The Vailguard
I just finished Star Trek: Starfleet Academy and man did I love it. Even more than Strange New Worlds. It felt like some of the best Star Trek ever… only for me to learn it was unceremoniously canned almost INSTANTLY because Paramount are cowards (and probably another reason) and it’s controversial for being “woke”. It’s not even that woke lmao. The writing is pretty politically tame compared to a LOT of the Star Trek that’s blindly worsphiped.
Starfleet Academy really excelled at being an outsiders look into what Starfleet is and what makes it (and Star Trek) compelling: the people and the ideals. It’s really nothing horribly unique. You start with a focal character that’s a rebel, doesn’t want to be at Starfleet Academy, and even has some harsh feelings about the federation and Starfleet due to his upbringing. You throw them into a cast of characters from various backgrounds who all share a much deeper admiration and trust for the values of Starfleet, but are also figuring themselves out. The rebel kid constantly causes trouble, but against their desires finds a “family” in the friends they’ve made at school. Overtime everyone warms to each other and prevents the rebel kid from being a lone wolf and ruining his life alone. If you’ve seen any coming of age story done well, well you’ve seen this. Another reason why I don’t get the woke complaints. It’s just not. We’re at a stage where people get offended by storylines that have been around for centuries. Anyway, what makes these stories work is the characters and really this show surprised me in that department. They spent more time on certain characters than I expected and developed them in ways that I think really worked. For essentially a young adult targeted show, there wasn’t that much Melo drama. We had our usual Star Trek speeches and monologues that are a little too heavy handed and on the nose with the “Here’s the complete moral broken down in detail dum dum” but it’s marginally better here with an opposition present throughout. It’s good Star Trek from an angle with don’t often get targeting an age demographic that I don’t think has EVER been targeted (this feels like it’s targeting Gen Zers in their 20s).
And it was canceled. Okay, Star Trek, Paramount, and Streaming as a whole are in an awful place because they’ve apparently lost all balls. Everything has to please every single person on Earth without making a single person online stir up a stink. Projects have these insane standards to meet. All while the streaming and modern format means we get less than half the episodes of old. Star Trek isn’t even benefiting from the linger length since they were always 45ish minutes. I don’t know how franchises are supposed to survive. They can’t survive on fan service, glob shittos, and letting their Fandom gatekeep everything. Starfleet Academy joins Star Trek Prodigy (the only modern Star Trek kids show) in being a show that targeted new younger and modern audiences that got unceremoniously canned at two seasons and buried by Paramount. Star Trek won’t survive if it doesn’t actively take risks and stick to those risks for a long time (more than two seasons of television for God’s sake) to make new fans. They can’t just press the nuclear button because butthurt people online who don’t know what the word “woke” means keep complaining (or for whatever reason). Nor can they expect the shows targetting new audiences to reach the heights of old instantly. Especially when they barely advertise. Honestly a problem not that unfamiliar with Xbox and the rest of gaming and just about everything else in the world.
You know it feels bleak. Star Trek Deep Space Nine got 7 seasons with 20+ 40 minute episodes each season. And Fans hated that spin off when it first aired. Even Enterprise got far more episodes and more seasons. We’ve gone so far backwards in 2026. It feels like we’ve really hit a breaking point in entertainment industries. Like a Fahrenheit 451 breaking point where we’re burning books because people get offended at everything or one even more boring where algorithms and AI is being used to create the optiminal content that’ll offend no one by being bland as heck. Entertainment companies are too focused on shareholders and playing everything safe as possible. God it’s so boring in 2026. How is the apocalypse boring? (exaggerating I know; there’s more content to consume than ever, but more and more it feels like a necessity to branch away from the large media companies and franchises).
Edit: It’s 2026, don’t look up anything about a show you like online. Dear God. I don’t know why literally everything has be to be toxic these days. What is really interesting to me is that I don’t see nearly as much of a response to the “good” Star Trek series fans approve of like Strange New Worlds. The hate for Academy is the most views I see anything Star Trek get ever. Starfleet Academy NYCC trailer got 8 million+ views; Stranger New Worlds Season 4 got 600k+ lmao. This is a really really embarrassing. For like humanity 
. And again way too common. Not sure what the path for all these franchises is if they don’t get out of their own way and their fans don’t stop pushing them in their own way. It’s like Xbox fans even before PS releases saying Xbox gave up because Cloud Gaming existed or the Xbox Launcher on PC. How is anything supposed to grow if so called fans doesn’t even let their favorite franchises try reaching new audiences?
Lanterns is off to a great start. I didn’t even know that Lindelof was involved, but it’s perfect. No one knows dark themed super hero material better than the dude behind the fantastic Watchmen show
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Trailer for LAIKA studios Wildwood.
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Microsoft is shopping their IP around in a package deal, rumor is they want a 300 million deal.
https://puck.news/newsletter_content/what-im-hearing-a-tv-crucible-xboxs-hwood-pitch-a-beavis-brawl/
I’ve started watching The Chosen. It’s about Jesus. I find it very good.
So…it’s high fantasy then?
I’ll see myself out
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