Stuff I Watched Last Month

 Probably not that much, but maybe not...

The Creator:  In the pre-streaming, pre-Covid world I probably would have watched this in a movie theater because it looked pretty interesting.  And it was good, though not really as good as I wanted to be.  Like Pacific Rim it kinda starts with two prologues, though they aren't quite as long.  The first reveals that AI blew up a nuke in LA and so the US and most of the world banned AI.  But "New Asia" or the "Far East" as it used to be called didn't and so America leads a war against them.  In the second prologue we meet Josh (John David Washington) who is undercover in Thailand but falls in love with Maya, a scientist.  American soldiers attack the night Maya reveals she's pregnant.  Josh thinks she dies and is taken back to America for debriefing.

Five years later, Josh is told Maya is alive and the link to "Nimrata" or the creator of advanced AI systems.  Nimrata is developing a weapon and so they need him to guide a team into the hidden lab to destroy it.  The weapon turns out to be an AI girl with a mostly-human body called "Alphie" who is basically a living universal remote--if your universal remote could turn off just about anything electrical. 

The problem for me was I could already figure out who Nimrata was and what was going on with "Alphie."  I spent the next hour or so then just waiting for Josh to figure it out.  That's always kinda annoying when watching a movie.  But otherwise it was a good movie.  It borrows a little from Star Wars, Aliens, Avatar, I Robot, Chappie, and probably some other things.  Still it never really feels like a ripoff of anything.  The visuals are really good and the acting competent enough.  Besides Washington there's Allison Janney as the hard-as-nails American military commander and Ken Watanabe as an AI soldier protecting Nimrata.  Overall if you like sci-fi this is one you don't want to miss even if it probably won't replace your favorites. (3/5) (Fun Facts:  A lot of movie was shot in Thailand and in the credits it seemed every Thai crewperson had a nickname like "Something 'Bo' Something."  I don't think I'd ever seen that many nicknames in credits before.  When they show the giant US Army tank thing I kept hoping it would transform into a robot or something.  Speaking of robots, the Americans don't use AI but they employ robots that look like R2D2 with arms and longer legs and chests filled with explosives.  Kamikaze bots like that probably would have been more effective for the Trade Federation during the Clone Wars.)

Prospect:  A year before The Mandalorian and a few years before The Last of Us, Pedro Pascal was Pedro Pascaling in this indie sci-fi movie.  A teenage girl and her father (Jay Duplass of indie directing team the Duplass Brothers) go to "Green Moon" to find a stash of rare gems.  Their ship lands off-course and so they have to hike.  But along the way they're ambushed by Pascal and another dude.  The father and other dude are killed, so Pascal and the girl have to team up to find the stash and get off the planet alive.  Along the way, despite that Pascal killed her dad, they start to bond.  For a low-budget movie it is really good and well-made.  Like I said, this was basically a warm-up for Pedro Pascal to his more popular "gruff guy protecting a child" roles.  The rest of the actors are good as well.  I just wonder though how much better a movie like this could be if it had the budget of The Creator or Avatar 2. If you haven't seen it (and you probably haven't) this reminded me a lot of Settlers (2021) that I watched last year.  Both are worth watching if you like sci-fi.  (4/5) (Fun Facts:  If you have a weak stomach, you might want to turn away during the amputation scene.  I hadn't even heard of this movie until I read a review on this site.  That's why you should actually read reviews like these instead of just skimming one or two; you might actually see something that sounds interesting.)

Robots (2023):  Another good indie sci-fi movie, only one I found myself on Hulu. Like I said on Facebook, if you want a rom-com for Valentine's Day with a little sci-fi and light R-rated humor then this is a good pick.  The movie takes place about 10 years from now when "Tesla Corporation" has replaced illegal aliens with robots.  The robots wear weird rubber mannequin faces so they're easy to tell apart.  Making robots look like actual people is forbidden and if you're caught, you can go to jail.

But a rich douche named Charlie does it anyway.  He uses "C2" to work at his dad's company and pick up women.  After a few chaste dates, a hookup for sex will be arranged and the real Charlie will move in and then dump the girl.  Seems a little unnecessary but whatever.

There's also a woman named Emily who does sort of the opposite.  She goes out with rich guys to get stuff and then uses her robot "E2" to actually have sex with the guys so that way she's not really a hooker; it's the robot taking one for the team.

Then C2 meets Emily, but on the night they're supposed to hook up, things get mixed-up and C2 and E2 end up together and fall in love.  They run away and the real Charlie and Emily have to track them down before the cops find out.  And guess what happens while they're doing that?  There is a happy ending for everyone though.

It is a lightweight comedy with some R-rated edge, but it's pretty fun and only about 90 minutes.  Like I said it'd be good for a Valentine's Day watch or a date night or something like that.  The actors and effects and everything are decent for a small-budget movie.  Also, to put on my pig nose for a moment, I didn't realize the girl from those Divergent movies had such nice boobs.  Oink.  Oink.  (3.5/5)

The Holdovers:  Alexander Payne reunites with his Sideways star Paul Giamatti for this "holiday" movie that really isn't a holiday movie.  As you'd expect from a Payne movie, it's not really heartwarming and jolly and doesn't really end Happily Ever After.  It's more sad because in the end no one is really better off.  Are they maybe wiser for the experience?  Possibly.

It's the end of 1970 at the Barton School for Boys.  Giamatti is a crusty teacher put in charge of five boys.  There's also a cook who lost her son in Vietnam.  But then 4 of the boys get a place to go leaving only one.  He, Giamatti, and the cook are left to their own devices and Giamatti and the boy start to bond.  They even take a trip into Boston for a "field trip."

There are some funny parts and some poignant moments.  Have the tissues handy if you're susceptible to that because the end is pretty sad.  It is really a lot like a movie version of a lot of literary fiction novels.  Or like Scent of a Woman without the Pacino yelling and some of the wackier bits.  A big courtroom-type scene at the end probably would have made for a happier ending but this was more believable. Overall while I wouldn't put this in my holiday rotation, it was a great movie. (4/5)

Indiana Jones & the Dial of Destiny:  Taking place over 10 years after the horrid Crystal Skull, this is a little less wacky, but seems more tired and paint-by-number.  It tries to hit all the notes of a classic Indiana Jones movie, but it's obvious how much feebler Harrison Ford is.  After an opening at the end of World War II with a deepfaked Ford, it moves to 1969, a month after the moon landing.  A Nazi scientist working for NASA and the daughter of an old friend of Indy's are both looking for the "Dial of Archimedes" that could predict fissures in time.  In action movie (and GI Joe cartoon) fashion the dial has been split in half so two pieces need found.  The last act gets a little wacky; in some ways even wackier than Crystal Skull.  And in the end I'm at a loss as to why we needed this.  It wasn't a huge step up over Crystal Skull and leaves Indy/Marion in a worse place than that did.  And while fans didn't like Shia LaBeouf's Mutt, killing him off-screen doesn't really give that or Indy/Marion's grief much heft.  Mads Mikkelsen matches Ford's low energy as the villain, which again is not really an improvement over Cate Blanchett's Soviet villain in the previous movie.  In the end while James Mangold and various writers deliver a well-crafted movie, it was pretty unnecessary and doesn't really let Indy go out in glory like Mangold did for Hugh Jackman's Wolverine in Logan.  (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  This is the third time Harrison Ford has revived a classic character with a new director after Episode VII and Blade Runner 2049.)

Loki, Season 2:  Speaking of something involving time and also failing to justify its existence in the first place.  I liked season 1 that had a variant of Loki created during Endgame taken to the "Time Variance Authority" and escape destruction by agreeing to help them find another Loki, who turned out to be a female called Sylvie.  Loki and Sylvie developed a thing for each other and found "He Who Remains," aka Kang.  Sylvie kicked Loki out a time door and then presumably killed Kang.  The season ended with Loki returning to the TVA to find statues of Kang and no one recognizing him.

Season 2 picks up with Loki being chased and jumping back-and-forth through time.  Then he meets Ouroboros or OB (the guy from Goonies and Everything Everywhere All At Once) and they try to get him stuck back in time but the "time loom" is overloading and so they have to hurry.  Episode 2 picks up with them looking for Sylvie and even though the problem with Loki being unstuck in time didn't really seem solved, I guess it was?  From there we have a lot of McDonald's product placement and another Kang Variant called Victor Timely (Fun Fact:  Timely was the original name of Marvel) and blather about time looms and doors and controlling the TVA and then the destruction of the TVA and I just could not give a shit about any of that.

This is that lame kind of sequel that just throws more stuff at you at the expense of doing anything interesting with the characters.  Maybe because it was "weird" they pretty much abandon the Loki-Sylvie thing.  Mobius (Owen Wilson) is just around to blather about pie and jet skis.  OB and Timely are just the same almost-autistic nerd who's good with machines and less good with people; OB is more child-like and Timely more con artisty but still mostly the same stock character.  Tom Hiddleston's Loki is pretty well wasted until the last couple of episodes.  Most of the time he lacks even the wit and charm that made people like him in the first place!  Who really wants to see Loki pining for his "friends" he's known for about five minutes?  If you're going to pine for someone, pine for the people you knew for thousands of years like your brother, father, Lady Sif, etc.  He should be trying to bring Asgard back, but I guess that would be more expensive.  Like "Brad" tells him, "You're a villain!  Just be that!"  Own it, dude.  But I guess that was always the problem with Disney trying to make a show about a bad guy.  Like Book of Boba Fett they had to take a perfectly good villain and make him a whiny bitch in some lame quest for "redemption."  Yuck.

The first season wasn't the greatest but at least it had more Loki being Loki and the fun Loki variants.  Plus the Loki-Sylvie thing that maybe was "weird" but it made sense.  I mean, who understands you better than you?  Especially when you're both "Variants" being hunted and threatened with execution.  This season just steps back from all that made the first season worth watching.

The last episode tries to put a cherry on this turd sundae but doesn't really do it.  Loki sacrificing himself for the greater good?  Meh.  Like that's what we wanted. Like seasons of Picard, Titans, Doom Patrol, etc, most of the characters are useless in the end, thus there's no real reason we needed to spend time learning about any of them.  Sylvie is especially underused and really contributed nothing to most of the show.  Why'd they even bother bringing her back?  Why'd they bother with about all of it?  This could easily have been slimmed down into a less-than-two-hour movie.  (2/5) (Fun Facts:  The "Time Tree" or whatever you want to call it that he creates is shown in the last episode of What If...? that I'll get to a little later.  There's a mention that "Universe 616" took care of a Kang, which is a reference to Ant-Man 3 as the 616 universe is the MCU.)

Echo:  Another failed attempt to "redeem" a villain.  When they announced this series I didn't really care since I barely remembered the character from Hawkeye.  Basically she's a deaf Native American girl with one leg named Maya who was raised by the Kingpin as a killer.  But when she found out he killed her father, she shot him and left.  This picks up five months later as she returns home to Oklahoma.  Then sends a bomb to the Kingpin in a vain attempt to take over his operation before he shows up and tries to recruit her and then kill her.

I would almost guarantee there was studio interference with this.  I mean from Hawkeye and initial reports this was going to be violent, bloody, and R-rated like Moon Knight, you'd think it would be a gritty crime thriller.  But by the end it seems someone handed down the edict to make her a Native American Ms. Marvel.  So in the last episode (that is a paltry 35 minutes) she gets a native costume and somehow has superpowers that she somehow knows how to use to basically do to the Kingpin like Sybok does to people in Star Trek V.  And also she can give her underused former best friend and grandma superpowers...cuz why not?  The problem is Maya is not adorkable like Ms. Marvel and with only 5 episodes (some pretty short) they didn't really set up the family and powers so it really doesn't work.  If they hadn't shifted the premise halfway through from her trying to take over the Kingpin's empire to becoming a protector of the Choctaw (or something) it would have been a lot better.  (2/5) (Fun Facts:  Daredevil has a cameo in the first episode during a flashback.  In the final cookie scene, the Kingpin gets the idea to run for mayor, which happened in the comics.)

Rick & Morty, Season 6:  This is not the most current season but the penultimate season.  It was...OK.  Not bad but not really great.  Competent and with some funny parts, but not really a lot of memorable bits.  Stuff happens.  Beth falls in love with her cyborg clone--and vice-versa.  Rick and Morty have to battle meta "heroes."  The family battles their nighttime selves.  Rick has to save Morty in a Sims-type video game while Summer "does a Die Hard" against some alien terrorists in an arcade.  Morty becomes king of the Sun.   Jerry becomes some kind of Green Lantern/Iron Man dude. Rick goes to therapy.  The latter two were part of the very special episode where Rick pretends to be the low-rent villain "Pissmaster" after the original kills himself. (Call 988 if you need help!)  The final episode asks the question:  what happens if you drop a lightsaber perfectly vertical?  Nothing good.  Probably should have had a safeguard that it turns off after a certain amount of time.  Also, not to nerd it up too much but a lightsaber can't instantly cut through everything so it would take a lot of time to make its way through the surface of Earth.  Anyway, if you like the show you'd like this but not love it.  If you haven't watched it this won't really make you a fan. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  This was the final season with co-creator Justin Roiland as Rick/Morty as he got canceled like Jonathan Majors did recently.  But apparently Roiland had pretty much only been doing voices for years.)

Rick & Morty, Season 7:  This dropped on MAX just days before my subscription was up so I binged through it.  This first season without co-creator Justin Roiland (still listed as an Executive Producer and still with a production card at the end of the credits but no longer doing the voices of Rick & Morty) is not that good.  The first episode was really annoying.  It focuses on Rick and some buddies going on a bender with "Mr. Poopybritches" whose wife is cheating on him.  It's one of those episodes that really takes for granted that people give a shit about the show enough to remember who the fuck Mr. PB and "Squatch" and "Birdperson" actually are.  And, yeah, that's not me.  The second episode has Rick and Jerry mixed up so there are two people who are part-Rick and part-Jerry instead of a clean body swap.  The third episode has the president fall in love with Rick's therapist while an old flame of Rick's visits and inadvertently creates a hive mind that threatens the Earth.  The fourth one was pretty stupid as there's some planet where if someone dies from suicide they create spaghetti inside of them and Rick has been harvesting that for the family, until Morty screws the whole deal.  WTF?!  I think it was supposed to be a nod to Soylent Green and supply chain issues from the pandemic or some dumb thing.  Whatever.  (Again, call 988 if you need help.)  The fifth episode is another of those where if you give a shit about previous seasons it would be a lot more interesting.  "Evil Morty" is forced to help Rick find "Rick Prime," and there's a brutal scene where Rick literally beats his other self to death for killing his wife.  And then, well, he should have read some comics or Count of Monte Cristo to realize that revenge is a hollow pursuit.  

The sixth episode is a clip show without real clips when Rick and Morty call up an Observer (like an almost-flat geode) to audit whether a list of "adventures" are adventures but when they insult the Observer they're arrested.  Some of the clips were funny but not great overall.  The seventh episode barely features Rick as Summer and Morty become fused like the mutant in the original Total Recall who had a Kuatu in his chest.  Morty is the Kuatu and then it becomes like Taken as he's kidnapped.  I guess if you really like those movies it'd be funnier.  The eighth episode is purely awful.  It reminded me of the South Park April Fool's episode where the whole thing was a Terence and Phillip movie.  Like with that, I wondered the first 5-10 minutes if this was an opening, but slowly it dawned on me it was the actual episode.  The whole episode is some weird thing about numbers and letters fighting each other, featuring Ice-T as the leader of the letters.  Rick isn't even in this episode, just Morty and his math teacher.  The only cool thing was that the look and overall story were based loosely on Transformers The Movie from 1986.  The ninth episode finally features Rick as he has Bigfoot kill him to infiltrate Valhalla to steal energy or something.  But the Pope steals the energy instead and in Edge of Tomorrow fashion they have to fight him several times before they get it right.  The season goes out with a whimper in the final episode.  Morty jumps down a "fear hole" in a Denny's and then it's like one of those mental Star Trek episodes or an attempted Twilight Zone episode where the hole keeps feeding on Morty's fear and he has no idea what's real and what's not.  

Overall while they downplayed Roiland's contributions to the series, this first season without him was pretty rocky.  It's like they gave in to all their worst impulses.  A few fun bits but nothing really good.  If you've never watched the series, definitely don't start with this.  (2/5)  (Fun Facts:  In that awful 8th episode, the title card of the fake movie uses the Transformers movie font.  In a later cookie scene that sets up a sequel I hope doesn't happen they show a title card using the Gobots movie font.  Adult Swim played it close to the vest about who the new voices of Rick and Morty are.  And they are...no one you'd have heard of.  One nobody does Rick's voice and another does Morty's now.  Unless you're really listening there's not a huge difference.)

Archer: Into the Cold:  After the final season that was pretty meh comes essentially a movie to close things out.  While originally billed as a 3-episode finale, on Hulu it streams all as one thing.  Basically while the UN is planning to ban private spy agencies, Archer and company have to unravel a plot to start a new Cold War.  This was a step-up over season 14 as it brings in some guest stars including Archer's cyborg ex-fiancée Katya, her former lover/Archer's former nemesis Barry, the former CIA operative Slater (Christian Slater), Rip the seaplane-flying Manhunter (Patrick Warburton), and even Milton the mobile office toaster.  The plot gets a little messy trying to work everyone into a winner-take-all scenario but for a final episode it was pretty decent.  It was nice some mention was made of Archer's father (though of course we'll never know who he was) and Archer and Lana's daughter makes an appearance at the end.  Maybe not everything fans were hoping for, but better than making the whole show (or even the last 6 years) a coma fantasy or something.  It just feels like a lot of cards were left in the draw pile though. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  In the bottom of the elevator shaft part of the old ISIS logo is visible.  I always think you can largely blame the terrorist group for this show going downhill as trying to replace the name of the spy agency--or if it even was a spy agency anymore--became a recurring distraction.)

Marvel's What If...? Season 2:  Season 1 was kind of a mixed bag of potential universes.  This second season is not really an improvement on that front.  Some stories are really good and some are less so.

Episode 1 has sort of a Blade Runner vibe to it.  In this universe Nebula becomes part of the Nova Corps just as the planet they're on is being invaded by Ronan the Destroyer or whatever, who bumped Thanos off.  "Nova Prime" uses a planetary shield to keep him out--and everyone trapped.  Years later, things on the planet are looking grim and when Yondu is killed, Nebula has to solve the mystery, which in Watchmen fashion becomes a world-changing event.  Overall it's a minor story with no great Marvel characters but pretty well done. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Seth Green voices Howard the Duck, who has become a casino owner/crime lord.)

Episode 2 throws it back to the 80s.  When Peter Quill is taken to Ego by Yondu, he gains his Celestial powers.  After he returns to Earth in 1988 and starts blowing up stuff in New York, a team is put together to stop him.  Peggy Carter and Howard Stark kind of share the Nick Fury role, Hank Pym is Ant-Man, Bill Foster is Goliath, T'Chaka is Black Panther, Bucky Barnes is the Winter Soldier, Wendy Fowler (I guess from the Captain Marvel movie?) is a Kree warrior/pilot, and Thor is Thor.  While the team struggles to stop Peter and then Ego it's Hank's daughter Hope who connects with Peter to save the day.  One of the things with some of these stories is how it can make you realize connections you wouldn't have thought of, like that Hope van Dyne and Peter Quill are roughly the same age and both at this point in time had lost their mothers, so it really makes sense they would bond.  It's good for the 80s Avengers that like a lot of comic book villains Ego uses his Celestial power in pretty linear, basic ways like creating rock monsters with his face on them.  You know, instead of just vaporizing them or something.  The end leaves room for a sequel and I am here for it. (4/5) (Sad Fact:  The animators are pretty careful not to show the World Trade Center in the New York scenes.)

Episode 3 is a holiday special patterned on Die Hard.  After the battle in Avengers, Happy Hogan is organizing the Christmas party in Stark Tower when terrorists led by Justin Hammer take over the building.  Happy, Black Widow, and Darcy (Natalie Portman's assistant) have to take on the bad guys and get help.  In the process, Happy accidentally gets dosed with Hulk blood to make him Hulk Hogan!  (Not the wrestler.)  This episode was hilarious and just absolutely brilliant for fans of Marvel and Die Hard.  It also really made me miss the first Avengers team.  We didn't know how good we had it! (5/5)

Episode 4 is the missing episode from season 1.  When the Watcher was putting together his team, there was a Gamora from a world where she and Tony Stark teamed up after meeting on Sekarra or whatever it's called from Thor Ragnarok.  For whatever reason that episode wasn't done in time so now they get to it.  Basically after throwing the nuclear missile into space during Avengers, Tony winds up on Sekarra instead of Earth.  Gamora turns up there to kill him for Thanos.  The episode reminds me of all the things I hate about Thor Ragnarok along with a lengthy race that gave me flashbacks to the podrace in Phantom Menace.  Jeff Goldblum manages to be even more annoying as the Grandmaster and the race is so interminable that it really sucks the air out of the episode.  A little more focus on Tony Stark and his struggle being light years from home would have been nice but there was so much that needed done there simply wasn't time. (2/5)

Episode 5 is a sequel to the first episode of the series where Peggy Carter became Captain Carter and Steve Rogers, who didn't get the super soldier serum, instead received a sorta Iron Man suit from Howard Stark called the Hydra Stomper.  This sequel combines The Winter Soldier with Black Widow movies.  Years after the Battle of New York, Peggy finds the Hydra Stomper with Steve inside, but he's being used by the "Red Room" as their assassin.  Peggy and Black Widow are lured to a creepy fake American town in Sokovia where they face off with the Hydra Stomper and an army of Widows led by Black Widow's fake mom--voiced by Rachel Weisz.  It's a good episode if you liked those movies mentioned above.  I really liked the former and the latter was pretty good too so I mostly enjoyed it.  Really they should make this a series, but they probably wouldn't.  The end has Peggy taken to 1602 for another episode. (3.5/5)

Episode 6 is a departure from the rest of the series.  While the other episodes are based off something from the MCU, this one creates something new.  A Mohawk girl named Kahhori finds the Tesseract and is transported to another world.  She gains basically Scarlet Witch powers and uses them to take down the Spanish attacking her village.  Did the Spanish ever actually interact with the Mohawk tribe?  I thought they mostly were down in Florida and in the southwest while the Mohawks were up in the New York state area.  Looking at someone asking about this on Reddit the popular answer is, "Bruh it's a cartoon."  Um, yeah, so?  I agree with someone who wondered why they didn't use the French.  It's basically Marvel making Disney's mistakes in Pocahontas.  Anyway, I hope you like reading subtitles because pretty much the whole episode is in Mohawk language and Spanish.  And what exactly is the distinction between her using her power to destroy the Spanish, even to force their queen to surrender, and Scarlet Witch using her power to create a family or destroy worlds trying to save them?  They don't really answer the question. (2/5) (Mini-Rant:  It kind of annoyed me they list the title as "What if Kahhori...something something?"  Like I was supposed to already know who Kahhori is when in actuality she never existed before this episode.  They should have made the title like, "What if the Tesseract Landed in Early America?" or something like that instead of making me feel stupid for not knowing who this character you just made up is.  Typical Marvel arrogance.)

Episode 7 is kind of funny because after the Mohawk episode pandering to Native Americans they decide to use cultural appropriation and a literal white savior.  This combines Thor Ragnarok (again, sigh) and Shang-Chi when Hela the Goddess of Death is stripped of her powers by Odin and lands in ancient China, where she meets Wenwu, who has the 10 rings.  Then there's this whole Kung-Fu thing where she learns from a master before having to team with Wenwu against Odin.  It was OK but I wasn't a Hela fan and while I liked Shang-Chi I'm not intimately familiar with it so it didn't do a lot to me. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  At the end, when she changes her ways, Hela's armor turns white like Darth Vader's in a Star Wars Infinities book--their version of What If...?)

Episode 8 is a riff on Neil Gaiman's Elseworlds tale Marvel 1602.  That featured Nick Fury as an agent of Queen Elizabeth, Stephen Strange as a court magician, a non-Spider Peter Parker, and other Marvel characters, including Steve Rogers as an "Indian" or something.  I don't remember it really well since I read it almost 10 years ago.

Anyway, this is sort of the same only it uses MCU characters like Thor, Loki, Hela, Scarlet Witch, Nick Fury, and then Captain Carter is called there to help, though she's unsuccessful as a rift in the sky periodically makes off with people.  When Hela is taken, Thor blames Carter and she takes refuge with Steve Rogers and his Merry men including Bucky Barnes and Scott Lang.  Appropriately then there's a heist to steal a stone that can find out who is the "Forerunner" or first person from somewhere in time who's inadvertently causing the rift. 

It's a pretty fun episode fitting a lot of the MCU into Elizabethan times.  The end is pretty poignant too.  Definitely a step up from the previous couple. (3.5/5)  (Fun Fact:  When Happy Hogan gets angry during the big fight at the end, he turns into the Hulk Hogan--still not the wrestler--from Episode 3.)

Episode 9 begins with the Dr. Strange from the previous season bringing Peggy Carter to his Sanctum, where he's imprisoned multiverse threats--and others.  Kahhori shows up to tell Peggy that Strange is trying to bring back his world that died in the first season.  (She speaks English now--pretty modern English too--so no subtitles.)  So then there's a big fight that brings in zombie Scarlet Witch, Killmonger with the Infinity Stones from last year, Hela, Surtur, the 10 rings, and more!  The fight goes on for a while and I'm sure you can guess who wins.

It's a pretty good ending, but not as good as the previous season.  Like the previous season they really needed to set up the Big Bad from the beginning and make it more of a recurring thing. (3/5)

There is of course plenty of room for sequels if they get the green light.  Most of this season was good and for me the best episodes are the ones involving the characters we know and love (or like at least) from the MCU.  I'm sure there's still plenty they could do with that.  This season featured only T'Chaka Black Panther for of course the sad reason that Chadwick Boseman was dead and I guess they didn't want to recast the animated voice either, even though they did for Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Black Widow.  Maybe because of Jeremy Renner's accident Hawkeye also doesn't really appear except in a couple of backgrounds.  This also didn't feature any Spider-Man; I'm not sure if that had something to do with their alliance with Sony or they just didn't feel like developing any stories with him.  With his long history and rogue's gallery they could really do a whole season just for Spider-Man stories.  There also wasn't any Captain Marvel, Star-Lord, Shuri, Vision, War Machine, Sam Wilson, (Captain America or Falcon), and only a glimpse of Rocket Raccoon.  Also none of the newer MCU characters like the Eternals, Ms. Marvel, Monica Rambeau, She-Hulk, Shang-Chi, or Ironheart.  And still none of the Defenders:  Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, or Iron Fist.  Or the Punisher.  So that's a lot of stuff they could work into another season.

The Watcher doesn't really get as involved as he did in the first season; he does have one funny line at the end of Episode 5 where he's like, "I'm the Watcher, I see all, I know...what the hell?!"  But it seems like he and Captain Carter kinda have a thing for each other.  Which makes you wonder what the Watcher has under his robe and what would happen if he made a baby with Captain Carter?  That would be an interesting What If...? episode or even story arc as their baby could be a rogue Watcher who threatens the universe and they have to put him/her down.

Tallying it up, the final score is 28.5/45 which makes for about 3.17/5, so a smidge over 3.  I'd say then it was decent, though a few episodes less so.

Invincible "Season 2":  After making people wait about 2 years, Amazon/Skybound give viewers 4 new episodes.  Hooray?  There are a lot of plot threads but obviously no resolution on anything.  

Previously:  After Mark (Steven Yuen) finds out he has superpowers because his father is "Omni-Man" (JK Simmons) he becomes the superhero "Invincible" who is pretty vincible.  When Omni-Man revealed his true plan was to take over Earth for the evil race the Viltrumites, he turned on Earth and his own son.  But he couldn't kill his son and flew away.

Some time later, Mark has recovered from his injuries and tries to work for the government though he still winds up making a mess of things.  Meanwhile his mother is trying to move on from finding out her husband is an evil alien who considered her a pet.  Atom Eve finds out that unilaterally using her powers, even with good intentions, is not a good idea.  Mark goes into space and finds out where his dad went until the Viltrumites show up for him.

Besides the Viltrumites there's a guy who was trying to bring together all the multiverse versions of himself to create a superbrain but Mark's interference turns him into a freaky supervillain who's going to...do something...maybe.  Mark is also going to college until he leaves for space.  The Guardians have a lot of inter-team hook-ups.  And a Martian decides to join the Guardians as a shapeshifting "hero" and despite that he in no way seems like a real human everyone just accepts him as human.

Some of it is good but it obviously is too short to really go anywhere.  Like the first season there are some funny parts and sweet parts and also some extreme violence and gore so there are some big tonal shifts. And plenty of gratuitous butt shots because I guess the animators like butts.  The second part of the second season is supposed to start in mid-March; I'm not sure how much I'll be able to watch before my Prime expires. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  the legendary Peter Cullen--Optimus Prime himself!--voices an alien leader who might be a turncoat.)

Reacher, Season 1:  Offutt mentioned he was blogging about this so since I had nothing else to watch, I watched the first 4 episodes and liked it.  What people complained about with the movies is Tom Cruise is nothing like the book Jack Reacher.  So this time they cast Alan Ritchson, who is huge and swole.  This Reacher is like if you could put Sherlock Holmes's brain in Steve Rogers Captain America's body.

Reacher goes to a little town in Georgia only to be arrested for the murder of a stranger that turns out to be his brother.  With the help of a black detective and a female regular cop, he starts unraveling a massive counterfeiting conspiracy.  My only criticism of this first season is it probably didn't need to be 8 45-55 minute episodes.  Six episodes or even a 2 1/2 hour movie probably could have gotten it done.  It doesn't really feel long or boring, but maybe they didn't need all of the plot twists and such.  The book is I guess 530 pages so they probably did do most of that, but I haven't read any of the Reacher books.  Anyway, it was fun to watch Reacher beat people up and make his deadpan, insightful comments. The supporting characters do a good job as well. (4/5) (Fun Fact:  Before this Ritchson was the douchebag linebacker Thad on Spike's Blue Mountain State and also Aquaman on Smallville.  Kristin Kreuk was Lana Lang on Smallville and plays a banker's wife who has to go on the run with her kids.)

Reacher, Season 2:  Season 2 ramps things up as Reacher goes to New York to hook up with others from his old Army unit.  A corrupt company is planning to sell missiles to terrorists and when a couple of Reacher's old buddies find out, they're killed by being thrown out of a helicopter.  Reacher and those who are left have to track down the bad guys led by Robert Patrick of Terminator 2.  There are also flashbacks to Reacher's unit's first--and last--case.  Most of it was good but the end is pretty disappointing.  I mean we follow this "AM" guy's whole journey from LA or wherever to New York and then there's no throwdown with Reacher?  The rest is wrapped up so easily that literally half the episode is just an epilogue.  Like the previous season it probably could have been 6 episodes or even fewer.  Still it was pretty fun. (3/5) (Fun Facts:  One of the company execs who unwittingly becomes part of the scheme is played by Christina Cox who was in Due South and Street Law back in the mid-90s and Max Havoc 2 in the 2000s.  While season 1 was based on the first book, this season is taken from book 11, which from the description is set on the West Coast instead of New York.)

The Retirement Plan:  A movie that could have been good with more of a budget and more talent behind the camera.  There was plenty in front of the camera with Nic Cage (looking like Nick Nolte's mug shot), Ron Perlman, Jackie Earle Haley, and Ernie Hudson.  You have a bunch of old guys who've been in better things slumming in a movie that can't decide if it should be a comedy or action but winds up not doing either well.  

There are a lot of action movie cliches:  there's a McGuffin (a thumb drive) that's stolen and given to Nic Cage's granddaughter; who's sent to the grandpa in the Caymans (where Krusty the Clown and other rich people do their illegal banking); the bad guys follow but Nic Cage is a former government guy with a particular set of skills.  Then blah blah blah, fight scenes, people taken hostage, double/triple/quadruple-crosses.  It starts out not that bad but loses its way to just become bland and dull.  A lot of the camera work and overall quality of the production looks little better than Rifftrax fodder like Birdemic or Jurassic Shark.  Or maybe Max Havoc Curse of the Dragon with a slightly better cast in a slightly different tropical setting.  (2/5)

Mob Land:  To tell you how uninterested I was in it:  I paused this after lunch to shovel snow.  Then I paused it again later to watch football.  How I thought of this is basically a cheap cosplay of No Country for Old Man, Hell or High Water, or another similar gritty thriller story.

A lot of cheap action movie favorites are here:  Kevin Dillon as a guy who plans to rip off a couple of Oxy pushers, Steven Dorff as the wanna-be Javier Bardem, and John Travolta as the sorta-fat fake Southern sheriff.  The main character is some dude named Shelby who has a wife and little girl with really hairy arms.  (Seriously, the kid's arms look hairier than mine.)  Shelby is down on his luck so he agrees to help Kevin Dillon but then shit goes wrong and Steven Dorff forces him to help clean things up for no real reason.  Travolta sorta looks into things while apparently having cancer or something.

It's really long and boring and like the previous one there are a bunch of cheap action movie clichés.  Maybe I'm just getting bored with these.  Or maybe they're just out of ways to make them interesting. (1/5)

97 Minutes:  Let's start with a Fun Fact:  this is only 94 minutes.  It's a really cheap and poorly-written and poorly-staged airplane hostage movie.  Really makes me miss the quiet dignity of stuff I watched with Rifftrax like Hijacked Flight 285 and Money Plane.  There's almost no attempt made to establish any of the characters ahead of time and then we have little idea who the hijackers are (even they don't seem to know each other) or who the passengers are or anything.  The "command center" is an obvious green screen set that's so sparse it looks more ridiculous than the fake sets in James Nguyen's Replica.  I'm pretty sure Alec Baldwin is only in this to help pay legal fees for what happened on the Rust set.  At this point maybe only something this bad and low budget would be willing to risk employing him.  Other than Baldwin there's Jonathan Rhys Meyers of The Tudors as the "good guy" and some lady who's a doctor and...some other people, including the writer of the film as one of the lead terrorists...I guess.  This also features some of the worst air combat scenes since McBain.  An F-22 launches a Sidewinder missile at the airliner and the good guy makes the plane jerk to the right or left.  Which since a Sidewinder is heat-seeking would not really throw it off much and as long as it has fuel it could probably circle back.  That's why planes like F-22s have flares to throw off heat-seeking missiles.  An airliner wouldn't have that though except for Air Force One like in that Harrison Ford movie.  Anyway, this was another pretty bad cheap action movie. (1/5)

Bait (2019):  I read a review of this on a blog and it sounded interesting.  It is a fairly odd film.  It's shot in grainy black-and-white so that it looks like a low-budget movie from the 40s or 50s.  Or sort of like Clerks.  There are a lot of close-ups and flashes to stuff that might be flashbacks or flashforwards.

Mostly it's about a guy named Martin whose family have been fishermen in southwestern England for a long time, but now his brother has turned their fishing boat into a tourist boat.  Their family home has been bought by yuppies and turned into a vacation home/Airbnb for other yuppies.  There's a whole gentrification thing going on that Martin and others don't like while others just shrug and go along with.  To get by, Martin strings a fishing net on the beach to catch fish washed in by the tide.  He sells the fish to the local bar to make money to get his own boat.

Eventually there's conflict with the yuppies and someone dies--I think.  This probably could have been told in a more coherent style and might have been more meaningful.  I didn't find it bad as much as a little odd and confusing.  But at least it's shorter than other rich vs poor movies like Parasite, Triangle of Sadness, and Saltburn.  So there's that. (3/5)

For Groundhog Day, Let's Go Back in Time!

I decided since it's Groundhog Day to honor the movie Groundhog Day and its time loop, here's a post looped in from long ago.  I used a random date generator to pick a date, which took a few tries because it kept picking weekends.  And also it seemed to pick December a lot so no surprise that it picked December 7, 2012, the 71st anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor but also a post on Briane Pagel's holiday blogathon and a story from Tales of the Scarlet Knight Vol 8: The Heart of Emma Earl that I expanded a bit.

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This is part of Briane Pagel's holiday blogathon (of doom).  Today I'm giving away a free copy of We Are Now, a book of flash fiction stories (over 65 in all!) written by me, Neil Vogler, and Sean Craven.  As a preview of the sheer awesomeness contained therein, this is one of those stories, "Christmas Feast."

An author's note is that this story is based on a story former Scarlet Knight Percival Graves tells the current Scarlet Knight Emma Earl in the final volume of the series--I think.  It's about an incident that takes place at Christmas in World War II when Percival was in the British army.  This story itself is largely based on the old Snoopy holiday album where Snoopy and the Red Baron share a Christmas together.  So now you know...
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Marching through knee-deep snow in the blistering cold in some godforsaken corner of France is not how I ever wanted to spend my Christmas.  But we got our orders.  We’re supposed to march these German bastards to base so they can ride out the rest of the war in a prison camp.  At this point I envy them for that.

“Why’d we have to get stuck with this shit job?” I ask.

“Just lucky I guess,” Syd says.

Talking takes too much energy, so we plod on.  It’s starting to get dark when Lucky calls out that he sees a house.  Anyone else said that I’d think they were imagining it, but Lucky once spotted a German machine gun nest in the pitch dark.

It’s a few minutes before I can see Lucky is right; there is a farmhouse up ahead.  The roof is mostly caved in, as is the porch, but the walls seem solid enough.  Sarge dispatches Reg to make sure.  “Why don’t you make one of the Jerries do it?” Reg says.  “Let the damn roof fall in on them.”

“Get in there, you pillock,” Sarge growls.

Reg grumbles, but he does it.  None of us ever go up against Sarge, not even the lieutenant when he was still with us.  Sarge got a medal in the Great War for defending his trench from a German attack.  Held it all by himself.  A man like that you don’t challenge unless you want to end up in pieces.

We mill about and smoke some of our last fags while we wait for Reg.  The house doesn’t fall in on him.  I expected something bad happened when he came out waving his arms and shouting.  “Sarge, you got to see this!”

“What is it, you damned fool?”

“You’ll see.  Come on!”  Reg prances about like a six-year-old who’s got to use the loo.

Syd and I are the last ones into the house.  Even then we don’t get to see much as we have to watch the Jerries.  We keep them in the living room, amongst a bunch of scorched and mildewed furniture.  The Germans don’t do much; they’re just happy like the rest of us to get out of the snow and wind.

Lucky comes back to give us the word.  “There’s food in here:  canned ham, potatoes, and even peaches!  A right proper feast it is.”

I lick my lips as he talks.  For the last five months about all we’ve eaten is the canned shit the Yanks call “food.”  The prospect of ham—even canned—sounds too good to be true.

The news gets better.  Finn tears into the room, armed with a couple of glass bottles.  “Look at this!  There’s a whole cellar full of it.”

Wine!  That’s even better than canned ham and peaches.  It’s tempting to grab one of the bottles and guzzle it right then, but I know Sarge would knock me on my ass if I neglected the prisoners to get drunk.

“What’s all this ruckus about?” Sarge asks.  Finn describes what he’s found.  “Leave that down there.”

“But Sarge—”

“Leave it.  You and Lucky go out and check that barn.  Make sure no one’s holed up in there.”

Finn and Lucky grumble, but again they obey.  Sarge turns to me.  “Percy, you and Syd get these Krauts into the dining room.”

I don’t know any German, but a jab to the back with my rifle and some pointing gets them to move in the right direction.  Reg and the rest of the platoon are already in there.  They’ve got the food laid out on the table.  There’s ham, potatoes, peaches, preserves, and even some tinned biscuits.  It’s not a lot, but compared to what we’ve had it’s a banquet.

Sarge addresses the Jerries in their native tongue.  They sit down on the floor in a couple of rows.  “Now, lads, get out some plates.  Try to find some that aren’t cracked.”  They manage to find enough plates, trays, and pot lids for the whole platoon.  Sarge clears his throat.  “You lot fail your math classes?  Get out ten more plates.”

“Ten?  But Sarge, we int going to share with the Jerries are we?” Reg asks.

“They got to eat like the rest of us.”

“Let them eat the canned shit,” Reg says and others murmur agreement, including me.  This is the first real food we’ve had in months; why should we share it with the blokes who’ve tried to kill us?

“Now see here.  I’m in charge of this outfit and I say we’re sharing with the prisoners.”

He glares at us, but this time Reg glares back.  There’s a wild look in his eyes I haven’t seen before.  “You’re wrong, Sarge.  We shouldn’t have to share anything with these bastards.  If you don’t see that, then maybe you shouldn’t be in charge of this outfit no more.”

Sarge has Reg doubled over before I even see his fist move.  A second punch and Reg is out cold.  Sarge looks around at the rest of us.  “Anyone else want to argue about it?”

Lucky decides to press his luck.  “I don’t mean no disrespect Sarge, but these are the enemy you’re talking about.  Why we got to treat them so good?”

“You lot forget what today is?  It’s Christmas Day, the day when our lord and savior Jesus Christ was born.  He’d be damned ashamed to see this.”  Sarge glares at us again.  He gestures at Reg.  “Any of you others think different, you’ve got to go through me first.”

 No one else challenges him.  We let the Germans have their share of the food.  We even let them have some of the wine.  Maybe it isn’t the biggest Christmas feast I’ve ever eaten, but it’s the best one I remember.

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One random commenter will receive a free copy of We Are Now, which includes "Christmas Feast" and many more stories.  Of my stories I can say a few others are in this same sappy vein while many others are far more madcap.  They involve things like zombies, vampires, dragons, Transformers, gods, God, and Godzilla.  If you don't win, you can buy the book from December House Publishing. (Offer no longer valid as the company hasn't existed for years.)

Monday is [NOT] a Phony Photo of a May-December romance...

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Now the appropriate song for this entry...

Be sure to put your booties on campers, because it's cold out there!

"AI" Audiobooks Are Here And About What You'd Expect

Really since 2013 I've used the Text-to-Speech on my Kindles to listen to books in my car.  I'm sure most people wouldn't like it but after a while you get used to the automated voice reading the books.  The mispronunciations like "See Monday" for "C'mon" or "Maximum" for a sentence that ends "Max." or "Lung-ed" instead of "lunjed" or "Jills" for "gills" are still somewhat amusing.  For me it let me "read" books and avoid paying tons of extra money for audiobooks.  The Kindle also makes it easy to transport them instead of needing an MP3 player that can maybe hold one book at a time.

So I didn't really have the hang-ups other people might have when Amazon announced "Virtual Voice" audiobooks.  One night in December I opened my KDP and saw I was eligible to have my books put in Virtual Voice.  And I shrugged and said, "Why the hell not?"

You can scream about "AI" replacing real human narrators all you want.  Someone like me could never afford a real human narrator who's any good and my speaking voice would be much, much worse than "AI."  And a profit-sharing arrangement would just be a waste of time for the narrator.

So yeah I figured, why not?  All I had to do was go to a page for each book.  You can choose your narrator from a few options.  When I started they only had four but then they added a few more.  You can pick the speed you want them to read if you want or just go with the default.  Ones I really cared about I selected some options but most I just went with the default.

Then a few hours later it might be approved and from there people can buy it for $1.99 if they already have the book or $3.99 if they don't.  Those are the minimum prices you can charge.  You can charge more if you want, but why would I?

I could only do it at first for maybe 40-50% of my books.  Older ones especially it would bitch about not having a table of contents.  Others it would say it, "Hasn't completed the post-publishing process."  What is that, Amazon's version of the NFL's, "process of the catch" for receiving?  I emailed Support and didn't really get an explanation.  They just asked for ASINs and I could have them fix it.  Which would be fine if I only had like 5 books, but with over 200 it would be kind of annoying to find all of the ASINs.  Anyway, they did fix a few, though I'm not sure how many.

When I emailed them a second time with the ASINs of a bunch of the entries, the person said it happens because the start and end of the book aren't set and they have to do it manually.  So I expect the 50 or so I sent them will be done any day now.  LOL.  Yeah, it's probably never happening.  There are another 40-50 that say they don't have a table of contents.  Some are newer books and when I look them up on the Kindle previewer thing it shows a table of contents, so I don't know what their deal is.  I think it'd be a lot easier if you have traditional books with chapters since most of mine aren't really long enough to need chapters.

Once the first batch of audiobooks was published, I made an announcement on my Eric Filler website and newsletter and...not a lot happened.  For December I sold 31 audiobooks.  The most popular ones were Chance of a Lifetime and First Contact with 5 apiece.  So it wasn't even my erotica books that were leading the way.  An erotica omnibus was second place with 4.  Actually 1/3 of those first 30 sales were for PT Dilloway books.

January so far has about 45 audiobook sales and it's pretty much just a grab bag.  Mostly Eric Filler titles this time around.  There are a few with 2 sold, but not more than 2 so far.

But really as you'd expect, these "AI" books are nowhere near as good as a decent human.  Amazon actually calls them "computer-generated" and not "AI" which is probably more accurate.  They're just an upgrade of the text-to-speech on my Kindle.  They might get a few more pronunciations right, but they're still pretty flat.  I listened to the first couple of chapters of Chance of a Lifetime and some of Where You Belong and a couple of others.  I definitely wouldn't pay more than $4 for them.  Like how "AI" writing is just vapid, empty garbage, the "AI" reading still lacks the warmth of an actual human reading it.  A computer program just doesn't know where and how to shade the writing to sound natural.  I'd just stick with the Text-to-Speech on my old Kindle since I already have it and it's free.

I'm not really sure what readers think of them.  First someone would have to actually write something instead of just give a wordless rating.

The audiobook sales are included in your KDP Orders reports but you have to run a filter to separate them.  Even then it seems like the reporting on them is a bit slow.  I'll check it one day and there won't be sales for a day and a couple of days later that same day might have a couple of sales.  I'm not sure how they're doing the reporting for them that there's the delay but it might be a glitch that eventually gets fixed.  Or not.  The old reports don't have a bar for the audiobook sales and probably never will since ostensibly those will still be retired.

Anyway, if you have Audible already, maybe give it a try.  Or listen to a sample.  If you don't like gender swap books you can try A Hero's Journey for instance. I would have liked a male British narrator to pretend it's Marlin the ghost but they only have female British voices so far.

A couple of weeks ago, author Lawrence Block had a different take on it that you can read here.

One last thing is you can't do the audiobook until your Kindle book is "Live" on the site.  Which is a little annoying because then I either can't put a link in my newsletter or I have to wait until the audiobook is done too before I can send the newsletter with links to both.  Especially for preorders I don't know why you couldn't just set up the audiobook but probably they haven't figured out how to do preorders or how to have the audiobook if the Kindle book isn't on the site and all that nonsense.  I wouldn't look for them to ever fix that issue either.

Is Streaming Greed Catching Up to Studios?

 A month or so ago I was reading Scott Mendelson's Substack about Aquaman 2 and Migration the latest animated release from Illumination, the people behind Sing and Minions.  Pre-pandemic and especially pre-big streaming era (like up until 2017 or so) kid's movies were pretty much guaranteed moneymakers.  Pixar, Disney, Shrek, Despicable Me, Trolls, Ice Age, etc all made tons of money and most spawned franchises with multiple sequels and TV shows and merchandising.  

But in 2023 Pixar's Elemental didn't do great.  Disney's Wish didn't do great.  Migration wasn't really doing great.  The most successful animated movie was Super Mario Bros in the winter.

One of Mendelson's newsletters said:

 This also means this is the first time they will be dealing with the overall downturn for original, non-IP animation that has been in play since 2018. Pixar’s Coco was the last original animated blockbuster, earning $800 million worldwide in late 2017.

I had a thought:  maybe besides "inflation" and rising theater ticket/concession costs, parents are figuring out that they don't have to go to a theater.  They can wait 2-3 months and just let the kids watch the movie on streaming.  If it doesn't stream the same day in some cases.  Instead of having to wrangle the kids and get to the theater at a certain time and deal with lines, concessions, bathrooms, Covid, and whatever, they can just turn on the TV, bring up the app, serve their own snacks, and use their own bathrooms.  It's a lot cheaper and easier.

It's a big change from back in my day.  Home video only really started in the late 70s and early 80s.  Even then it could take the better part of a year before a big release like ET or Return of the Jedi would be on VHS tape.  By the 90s it was quicker.  Still, even in the 2010s it'd probably be 6 months or so before you could buy a movie on DVD or digital.  It'd be even longer for it to show up on HBO, Showtime, or some other cable channel.

But now with so many streaming services, each one needs content to draw users to it.  Adding a big theater release like Barbie, the latest MCU release, or an animated movie is a way to get views and hopefully subscribers.

When you see numbers for animated movies sagging, is part of it because parents have figured out that they don't need to go to the movies anymore?  They can save time and aggravation and only wait a couple of months, so for the kids maybe not a lot of FOMO.  The pandemic also probably helped to break kids and their parents of the need to see every new release right away.

By trying to get more subscribers for their streaming services, maybe studios are damaging their profits.  That is the risk with having so many streaming options and also when the movie studios are trying to sell movie tickets and streaming subscriptions at the same time.  When the major streaming services were mostly not movie studios as well (back when you mostly just had Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu) there was kind of a separation and really less motivation for studios to put something on streaming sooner.  

Now that every studio has their own streaming service too, there's pressure to put it on streaming to get views/subscribers.  Studio execs naïvely thought they'd have their cake and eat it too.  They thought people would watch it in the theater and then turn around to watch it on streaming a few months later.  But maybe that's not happening as much anymore.  The studios saw how much Netflix was making and wanted a piece of the action, but it turns out that it might be damaging their business instead of helping it.

The caveat might be that this is more for original movies.  Trolls 3 and Across the Spider-Verse did pretty well.  Besides being IP-related movies they probably also had more of a following among teens/young adults.  Like teens/young adults who were kids when the first Trolls came out would be more likely to go see that than a more kid-friendly original movie like Wish or Migration.  And Spider-Man pulls from all age demos plus some who maybe aren't huge Spidey fans but liked the first one.  Super Mario being a video game franchise from the 80s also probably had broader support.

That's just my theory at any rate.

(Bolstering my theory is Mendelson's newsletter today saying that the top 7 movies streamed this year were all animated movies.  Some like Moana, Encanto, and Frozen were older ones too.)

Celebrate Groundhog Day With A Blast From Blogger Past!

 Since Groundhog Day falls on a Friday, I decided to have a little fun with it.  The famous (or infamous) movie Groundhog Day is about Bill Murray's selfish weatherman getting caught in a time loop of one particular Groundhog Day in a small Pennsylvania town I'm not going to look up to spell correctly.

I got thinking that it'd be fun then to do my own little homage to Groundhog Day by picking a random old post to loop back to on February 2nd.  I did it by using a random date generator, which took a few tries then to find a date that wasn't on a weekend or otherwise when I didn't blog.  Then I copied and pasted the blog post.  I find the easiest way to do that in Blogger is to go into the edit screen and select the HTML view and just copy the code.  Then create a new entry and paste the code in the HTML view.

Of course that only is for Blogger; anyone who uses Wordpress or some other site would have a different setup.

Anyway, if anyone reads this, I thought maybe other people could do this for their blog on February 2nd.  Not an official "blogfest" but maybe an unofficial one if you've got nothing better going on.  From what I've seen the last few years, most people don't.

And come back February 2nd to see what the random generator picked!

Burning Books is Wrong. But So is Banning Book Burning.

 On Facebook there was a post about Denmark banning the burning of the Quran and other holy texts.  The writer of the post proclaimed, "Absolutely absurd and an outright attack on free expression. Shame on the Danish Parliament."  But while I don't support the ban, I also can't support people who burn books, even books I don't agree with let alone like.

Of course saying that I don't support burning books opened up a can of worms.  The usual gamut of insults and illogical arguments.

"What about Mein Kampf?  Wouldn't you burn that?"  No, I wouldn't.  Because when you start saying some books are OK to burn, where do you stop?  And who decides?  And like Rod Serling said in a Twilight Zone about death camps, we need to keep evil books like Mein Kampf around so people will remember.  Erasing the bad can be just as harmful as erasing the good because it makes it easier for the bad to repeat itself.  Already you can see that happening as more and more survivors of the camps and veterans of the war die off; it becomes easier and easier for young idiots to think it's a hoax or just some story in a movie.  

"So I have to own a book forever?"  Um, no, there are plenty of non-burning ways to get rid of books you don't want.  Give them to a library, sell them to a used bookstore, sell them online, or like I've done before just leave them somewhere.

To which this idiot said, " If every moron gave their books to local library that would be too many books. How many books are sold in usa every year? You want to build libraries to keep them all?"

You think libraries keep every book donated forever?  And apparently no one ever checks them out.  Yeesh, such two-dimensional thinking.

"The only books I would choose to burn are *my* books to do with as I please. I wouldn't be burning somebody else's books."  The overly simplistic idea here is "as long as I own it I can do what I want."  OK, so as long as "Moms for Liberty" and other fascists BUY the books that's OK then?

"If they go out and buy copies of the books themselves and then decide to set their own property on fire, I'd encourage them to do it as many times as they want to increase sales and the profits of the (presumably) LGBT author. Do you think that's a bad thing? If so, why?"

I get it's America and capitalism is great and all that, but this isn't ONLY about money.  If authors of LGBT books put out books and make money but no one reads the books, then that's not really a happy ending.  The kind of books we're talking about aren't dreck like I put out that is just to make money; these are books about serious issues.  The point is for those books to be read, not just to make money.

Another thing about "my property" is you know what they say:  possession is 9/10 of the law.  So if people elect a fascist government and they take your books, does that make it their property at that point?  At which point, does that mean they're entitled to do whatever they want with it?  Including burning it?

The other thing about the "it's my property, I can do what I want" argument is the simple people who say this don't really think it through.  Just because you own something, doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with it.  You can own a cat or dog but that doesn't mean you can butcher them or have sex with them or light them on fire.  There are things you can't do with cars and things you shouldn't be able to do with guns.

And really, until about 159 years ago, half the country could "rightfully own" people.  So by the ownership logic, a slave owner could light his slaves on fire if they displeased him.  It's his property, right?

To which someone said, "Books are just paper!"  Well if they're "just paper" why are people burning them in protest?  Obviously they aren't "just paper."  So that person called me a troll and tapped out.  And others just laughing reacted and tapped out.  When you can't fight with logic then just use icons and insults.

The point is the old saying, "Two wrongs don't make a right."  Fighting something bad with something bad doesn't make it right.  Whatever injustice you think you're fighting by burning books, it's still wrong.  And passing a law to ban that is also bad.  It's just two different flavors of fascism.  They're both pretty rancid.  A couple of other people also said something along those lines so at least it wasn't just me--for once.

On Friday I'm kinda sorta trying to bring Blogfests back!

The Template for a Moderate Blockbuster is Pretty Common Sense

On Bluesky, former Forbes film industry expert Scott Mendelson announced he was doing a Substack thing and so I followed it.  One of the first articles is about the success of the Hunger Games prequel:  The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, which was pretty successful without the eye-popping numbers of Avengers Endgame or Avatar The Way of Water.  And the template seems kinda common sense.  It's really something studios--even Disney--should follow more closely.

1. Don’t spend like it’s a sequel to an already successful picture. 

The budget for this movie was only about $100M or half that of The Marvels.  Or maybe a third of Endgame or Avatar 2.

As an accountant I can verify this common sense wisdom:  fewer costs means greater profit.  The less you spend making the movie, the more you can make in profit.  Within reason.  I mean there are a lot of movies on the Rifftrax site that probably cost less than $5000--and look it.  You still want to have decent actors and effects, but don't spend so much that you're not likely to make it back.  Like they say about gambling:  bet only what you can afford to lose.  And making a movie is a bet.

2. Don’t promote your new movie by promising a new franchise. 

I mean, right?  How many times have studios been burned on this?  I get they want to make a splash at ComiCon or wherever by announcing some big "cinematic universe" or whatnot, but it's really putting the cart before the horse as the saying goes.  Then it's a little embarrassing for the studio when they promise a bunch of spinoffs, sequels, and TV series and the whole thing has to get scrapped because the first movie flops like The Mummy or maybe the second movie underperforms like Justice League or Divergent 2--whatever it was called.  Or in the case of Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible series they're back pedaling on calling the next movie "Dead Reckoning Part 2" because "Part 1" didn't do so well.

I suppose the theory was that announcing a bunch of stuff would generate buzz on social media and make people worry about FOMO if they miss the first one.  But The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes took a more measured approach and people watched it anyway.

At this point, with so many franchises and attempted "cinematic universes" and sequels, spinoffs, revivals, and reboots on film and television maybe it's at the point where announcing another one just makes people go "Ugh" instead of "Yippee!"  I mean people only have so much time available to invest and so if they think they might have to invest a bunch more time in something they might balk, whereas if you don't announce a bunch of stuff they might be more willing to watch it because they won't have to invest more time later.

And, more depressingly, with "inflation" and such a lot of people just might not have the money to see 10 different movies of a "cinematic universe" and sign up for a streaming service for 5 new TV series.  And they really don't have the money to support 20 different "cinematic universes."  Another reason that announcing a bunch of stuff might not get people as stoked as execs are hoping for anymore.

***

With "the MCU" seeming vulnerable, Star Wars still trying to recover from setbacks, and its animated movies not really connecting with audiences, it seems like Disney should adopt these rules.  Don't spend $200-$300M on the picture and cool all the grandiose announcements of sequels and spinoffs until you actually have a success.

If you think about it, that's kinda how those properties started out.  I mean when Iron Man came out they weren't paying Robert Downey Jr $20M; he was a bargain signing because of his past issues.  Director John Favreau had done a few movies but pretty much a bargain signing too.  And while they had Incredible Hulk already coming out I don't think they had announced a 5-year slate of movies yet.  Like I said in the previous entry, they didn't have another MCU movie until 2010 and then two more in 2011 not like the 3-4 they've been doing except in 2020.  And obviously they didn't have any series going back then; Agents of SHIELD didn't come along until 2013 and that was only tangentially connected--the same for Daredevil in 2015 and Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Punisher after that.

And the initial success of Star Wars was the same way.  Lucas made the first movie on a shoestring budget with mostly nobodies except a couple of old British guys.  No one at Fox was announcing a trilogy with spinoff TV shows.  They didn't even have action figures made until the year after the movie came out!

Besides Disney, other companies like DC and Paramount with Star Trek, Transformers, Ninja Turtles, etc should really follow those rules too.  Don't spend a ton of money on a bad project.  Don't announce a ton of stuff you'll have to back pedal from.  Do one good project that's cost-effective and if it's successful then worry about doing more.

It's easy for success to breed overconfidence though.  And when someone else is successful it's easy for you to think you can do the same thing.  But life--and movies--are mostly a crapshoot, especially in uncertain times.

On Friday I'm kinda sorta trying to bring Blogfests back!

Superhero Movies: The Fire Rises...And Burns Out

With the failure of most superhero movies in 2023, "superhero fatigue" has become a favorite term.  One person on Facebook wrote it all off as a "fad" expiring.  I don't really think you can call something that's been so successful for 15 years a "fad" but whatever.

When you think about it, the history of superhero movies has been like a fire that burns hot for a time, dwindles to ashes, and then reignites.

The Fire Ignites 1978-1982

Before 1978, "superhero movies" were mostly the old serials from the 40s featuring Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel (aka Shazam), and some others.  There was also the Adam West Batman movie in the 60s that didn't really do much.  Mostly superheroes were on TV in live action and animation.

Then along came Richard Donner's Superman with Christopher Reeve as the titular hero and the awesome John Williams theme song.  People believed a man could fly!  Though I thought it was pretty cheesy but whatever.  The movie made a lot of money and had a successful sequel (that was mostly filmed at the same time) in 1981.

But it didn't spawn a 15-year "fad."  No one really developed any other hit superhero franchises, just the disappointing Supergirl spinoff and MST3K/Rifftrax fodder like Pumaman and Supersonic Man.  And so in a few years the fire had burned down.

The Fire Rises:  1989-1995

By 1989 superhero movies were over again.  Superman had been retired after the lame fourth movie and not much else had really happened.  Then came Tim Burton's Batman, which brought its neo-Gothic style, Michael Keaton in black rubber, and Jack Nicholson as a scene-chewing Joker.

The sequel came out in 1992 and wasn't as good but still performed decently.  Another 3 years later came the cheesy Joel Schumacher sequel that was the biggest movie of 1995--in America.  Apparently it was #6 in the world.  

Unlike in 1978, this time there were a couple of lame attempts to capitalize.  Marvel had crappy Captain America and Punisher movies--and almost a Fantastic Four movie from Roger Corman and a Dr. Strange movie from Full Moon Entertainment that was released as Dr. Mordred.  And a couple of parodies like Blankman and Meteor Man.  And there was Sam Raimi's Darkman, which I love but the public did not.  But Raimi would have the last laugh.

But in 1997 Batman & Robin and Spawn flopped pretty hard and so the superhero movie fire burned out for a few years except for Blade which was really more about vampires anyway.

The First Modern Era:  2000-2005

After mostly an absence for a few years, superhero movies returned in a big way in 2000 with Bryan Singer's X-Men.  Gone was the cheesiness of Joel Schumacher's Batman movies and none of the neo-Gothic look of Tim Burton.  Instead there was more of a realistic look and attitude.  Sam Raimi's Spider-Man came along in 2002 to amazing success.  Sequels to both franchises were well-received.  

There were also the failures like Hulk and Daredevil.  And in 2004-2005 a couple of moderate successes in Hellboy, Batman Begins and Fantastic Four.  All of those would have sequels though only one would be successful.

The fire had already reached its top temperature and started to burn out again.  In 2006 there were disappointments in X-Men: The Last Stand and Superman Returns.  It only got worse in 2007 with the lame Spider-Man 3, Ghost Rider, and Fastastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

Really 2007 should have been the year that killed superhero movies forever, but the best was yet to come!

The MCU Era:  2008-Present

Superhero movies seemed to be on the ropes...and then Iron Man happened.  It wasn't exactly a billion-dollar hit like later Marvel movies but it laid the foundation with Robert Downey Jr.'s smart-ass performance as Tony Stark and a cameo by Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury at the end.  There was a little hiccup with The Incredible Hulk a month or so later that didn't really slow the MCU.

In July came Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight with Christian Bale returning as Batman and Heath Ledger's Oscar-winning turn as the Joker.

The next couple of years the fire maybe was burning a little lower--especially for DC--as Watchmen wasn't a big hit in 2009 and Jonah Hex was a pretty big flop in 2010.  Fox didn't do so well either with X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  Iron Man 2 did well and brought in more elements to the MCU.

Then the heat turned up in 2011 with Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger.  It really ignited in 2012 with the billion-dollar-breaking Avengers movie.  A few months later The Dark Knight Rises did pretty well too.

From there it was on for the MCU with Iron Man 3, Thor 2, and Captain America 2 in 2013-2014.  Avengers 2 and Ant-Man followed in 2015.  Meanwhile DC had a decent success with Man of Steel.

DC tried to turn up the heat with Batman v Superman in 2016, but it didn't really pan out.  Fox had a surprise hit with Deadpool while its revived X-Men movies did decently.  Its Fantastic Four revival though was a pretty big flop.  While DC and other comic book companies would try to match the success of Marvel, they never really did.  There were a couple of successes like Wonder Woman and Aquaman but the MCU was large and in charge, culminating with the mega-success of Avengers Endgame in 2019.

But now we're seeing the fire burning out again.  The pandemic delaying MCU movies for nearly 2 years didn't help.  Disney buying Fox took out some of the competition too.  And DC's natural inability to manage anything successful for very long.

Like 2007, 2023 was a year that seems like it should be the death of superhero movies--for now.  Most of the new movies were pretty disappointing and performed from bad to mediocre at the box office.

If the fire burns out again, how long will it last this time?  A year?  A few years?  Probably not forever.  As I said, since 1978 it's come and gone pretty steadily.  The IPs have in some cases have lasted more than 80 years so clearly there's something to them.

It'll be hard to test "superhero fatigue" this year as Marvel has pushed back all of its movies except Deadpool 3 to next year and beyond because of the strikes last year.  The new and unlikely improved DCU won't have its first movie until at least 2025 either.  So maybe the fire will roar back to life then or maybe it'll get snuffed out.

And when you think about it, there's one major thing to each time the fire burns out and comes back:  quality.  After Superman/Superman II you have two mediocre sequels.  Then Batman comes along years later, followed by weaker sequels.  Then X-Men/Spider-Man come along and each has a decent sequel but the third parts and most of the other franchise movies are pretty weak.  Then Iron Man/The Dark Knight come around to start a pretty epic run.

But for years now viewers have been faced with mostly weak sequels and original entries, though there are still occasional good ones like Shang-Chi or The Batman.  But most of the movies are pretty weak and you can't blame the public for having less interest.  When studios make better movies again, people will come back, as they pretty much have my entire life.