Category: Movie Reviews

Return Of The Jedi – The Final Star Wars Film… Until It Wasn’t

2022 marked the 20th anniversary of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and… well, I wrote a thing on that a while back, so I will spare you that piece of business here.

However, 2022 also marks the 30th anniversary of the third and final film in the original Star Wars Trilogy: Return Of The Jedi. And for seventeen years, it was exactly that; the last Star Wars film. Once the prequels came out, it merely became the final chapter in the Star Wars saga… until the arrival of The Force Awakens in 2015. Now I’m going to set aside all those other films for a moment – or at least, the majority of this write-up – so I can offer the following thoughts on Return Of The Jedi and why it was a satisfactory conclusion to the saga.

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Attack Of The Clones… Every Bit As Bad As I Remember It

Twenty years ago, on this very day, the fifth Star Wars film and the second episode of the Star Wars Prequel trilogy, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack Of The Clones, was released in theatres worldwide. As the second chapter of the prequels, it continued the story of Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and his young padawan Anakin Skywalker, who are charged with the mission of protecting the young Senator and former Queen Amidala from assassins, all the while trying to uncover the mystery of a clone army created in Kamino. The movie raked in about $650 million in the box office, but the reaction has been decided mixed.

Over the years, I have made no secret about considering Attack Of The Clones to be the absolute worst Star Wars movie ever made. I have held this belief since the day it premiered when I first saw it in theatres with my older brother and a bunch of his buddies, and even with the release of the recent films – which I tend to forget exist, coincidentally enough – it neatly lines that proverbial bottom of the Star Wars bottle. Now, it’s entirely possible that I may have been a bit harsh and maybe a fresh viewing through new eyes and on the eve of its twentieth year of existence, I may have gotten a new appreciation for this often misunderstood film.

So I pulled out the Blu-Ray disc that I had laying around, popped into my Blu-Ray player, resisted the urge to dive into the extras, and I watched Attack Of The Clones for the first time in years. And you know, I had the DVD release, I popped that into my DVD player, I kicked back and watch this film for the first time in years… and you know how some people would revisit something that they hadn’t touched in years because they had a low opinion of it and then they would go “Well, this isn’t as bad I remember it.”

Well, if the title isn’t much of a clue, then I give you my utmost assurance that no such thoughts came to mind after my viewing of Attack Of The Clones. It is, for all intents and purposes, every bit as bad as I remember it.

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The “Rise” of Skywalker… Oy

So, it’s been a while since we touched on Star Wars, hasn’t it?

Assuming you skip out on any video reviews I might have uploaded along the way, I think I might’ve touched on anything related to the long-running franchise only a handful of times in the past year. And yes, outside of the video games that I’ve gotten along the way, I have not touched much of Star Wars as of late. But since we’re talking about Star Wars today, I’d imagine most people would’ve expected something on the Mandalorian or one of the new upcoming series or maybe there’s a new video game that I’m not playing and choosing to ignore.

Instead, I’m going to talk about The “Rise” Of Skywalker.

Note the quotations around the word “rise” and that one image of Mark Hamill looking stern – the same one used for my piece of The Last Jedi a couple years back – and think about that for a couple seconds before realizing that you have me all figured out. Then question where you’re resigned with that thought and are left to either move on to something or click the break to learn more and perhaps be amazed by what the actual thought process is.

Ready to go?

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For Those Who Really Need Details On Solo

My hard-hitting review of Solo: A Star Wars Movie… well, let’s be fair. The banner pretty much sums up my thoughts on the film as a whole. Hell, I even did a quick dooble on the BoogieBoard gimmick (included after the break) that I posted shortly prior to this post.

But if you really want further thoughts…

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The Last Jedi… Meh… But With Spoilers!

For those who want a spoiler-y version of my thoughts on The Last Jedi… for whatever reason… here it is… It’s not a deep or detailed analysis nor is it a review – AW HELL NO, SON – but it is very spoiler-y and will address things that I both liked, didn’t like, and just wondered. Suffice it to say, those who would prefer a spoiler-free musings on the film can just scroll down and read my thoughts on the previous post.

(Note: I bounce around a lot and there’s a somewhat in-coherency to the whole ramble. But hopefully, whatever thoughts come to mind go through clearly, and if not… well, I tried.)

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The Last Jedi… Meh.

My thoughts on the latest Star Wars film are going to be brief because going into too much detail might be dipping deep into spoiler territory and I’d like to give people who have seen the movie a chance to go in with a clean slate rather than be, well, spoiled.

With that having been said, the only thing that I can say about The Last Jedi is that nothing of note happens and it’s back to business as usual. And even that might be a bit too spoiler-y without being too spoiler-y, but for what is supposed to be the big, major Star Wars entry – the big middle chapter in the trilogy – it just felt like a filler episode of a television series rather than anything of great significance.

Don’t get me wrong; I liked the movie enough that there were brief bits to enjoy. The space battle at the beginning of the movie was pretty good, the battle on the salt planet wasn’t too bad, I enjoyed the brief character interactions between Rey and Luke, the cast in general does the best they could with the material given and almost makes me believe in it, and then there was seeing Luke Skywalker in action for the briefest of moments.

But for the most part, I was largely underwhelmed. Questions that have been set up in the previous episode are either brushed aside or given rather underwhelming resolutions, there are plenty of uninteresting characters that I absolutely don’t care about, some of the character motivations are pretty goddamn stupid, the humor (with some exceptions) was overbearing to the point of obnoxiousness and almost makes me wonder if Episode IX is going to feature a crossover with the Guardians of the Galaxy, and as far as the direction of one Master Skywalker… well, I can see why Mark Hamill would fundamentally disagree with that sort of thing.

All of this would’ve been forgiven if the story was worth a damn and unfortunately, that isn’t the case here. Say what you will about The Force Awakens, but that had a sense of scope and opened the door to many new possibilities and interesting takes. It’s a pity that The Last Jedi chooses to ignore or even discard these new things and just bring things back to business as usual. I daresay that the movie is more interested giving us random characters who only exist to check items off the diversity checklist that the media likes so much, rather than give audiences a story that’s worth a damn.

Contrary to the supposed rallying cry that a lot of people are going for – at least if you were to follow the plethora of user reviews on the IMDB, this didn’t kill Star Wars for me. But I can safely say with absolute certainty that this is the first time since Attack of the Clones where I came out of a Star Wars movie completely underwhelmed and just disappointed by the lack of vision.

For what it’s worth, it’s an alright movie… but the best since Empire Strikes Back? Not a chance.

That would be last year’s Rogue One.

Random Thoughts On… Suicide Squad

So let me be upfront about this… I am not the biggest fan of the recent crop of DC films to come out of that camp. I’m talking about the Zack Snyder helmed stuff like Man Of Steel and Yawn Of Justice. Even going further back, I’ve also fallen a bit numb on what some would laughingly call the “holy” Dark Knight trilogy, of which only one of the films (The Dark Knight) holds up to any real degree. I’m not saying that I hate the films… well, Yawn Of Justice comes close… I just don’t think they’re all that good.

That having been said, watching the few trailers for this Suicide Squad film left me with some semblance of cautious optimism that this might be interesting at most and not completely worthless at worse. I was looking forward to this one; mostly to see how bad this might turn out.

Having just seen it and giving some deep thought, I can say with a clear conscious that Suicide Squad is perfectly average fare… and that probably makes it the best DC Film yet. Shocking, I’m sure.

Seriously, I actually enjoyed this one. It was simple, straightforward, no nonsense, no world building crap, just a bunch of bad guys doing bad things to even badder people. There was some decent gunfights, there was a couple laughs to be had at times, the mood was appropriately grim at times, and there was some attempt at making you care about these not-heroes, which is more than what I got out of the other flicks. In a strange way, Suicide Squad almost accomplishes the Iron Man affect; taking relatively lesser known characters and making people care about them in some form or another.

If there were any complaints to be had, I thought the drug-induced editing was a bit too much, what with all the “colorful” graphics and desperate attempt to infuse “livelihood” to a grim picture that was perfectly suited for the dark tone. The picture was dark to a point where it was difficult to see what was going on, The choice in music was absolutely dreadful, almost as if they just took whatever songs are or were popular and stuffed it in there without rhyme or reason in regards to tone (the actual score by Steven Price, on the other hand, is pretty good). And I’m particularly dismayed that they did very little with Katana (the one with the soul-stealing sword). Oh well.

Despite the quibbles, Suicide Squad was somewhat enjoyable and was completely terrible. Not a cinematic masterpiece nor a theatrical terror; just a perfectly average film that just happens to be the best film to come out of the DC Film Universe or whatever the fuck they’re calling it… and when “perfectly average” is the best you’re getting out of DC, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture.

Here’s hoping Wonder Woman doesn’t turn out to be a bust… sorry, poor choice of words.

Or is it?

MOVIE REVIEW – Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie (2014)

So I had originally intended this to be an extended vlog – about fifty minutes or so, but due to a variety of technical issues including Vegas crapping out on me multiple times during the rendering process, I ended up having to do a much shorter vlog, which in hindsight, may have been for the best. However, someone wanted the full version and while the chances of that happening now is slim, I did have the original text (or script, as the kids call it) for what the intended vlog was supposed to be… and so here it is, with some minor fixes and edits to make it readable at most.

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Movie Review – Iron Man 3 (2013)

Recently went to see the new Iron Man flick last night… to keep a long story short, I liked the flick and thought it was pretty decent for a mindless summer flick. Brother, on the other hand, was disappointed in it. And giving it a bit of thought, I understood (and partly) agreed with some views. But for the most part, I enjoyed the flick and I thought that, as a movie that not only follows up on the previous Iron Man film, but also as an immediate follow-up to that Avengers flick, it was a rather sound and decent film that no longer has the baggage of its predecessors to build to some movie several years down the line. Is it as good as previous films? Not really due to a couple minor bits here and there that take the film down a notch in my mind, but I still thought it was decent fair.

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