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.)

Continue reading “The Last Jedi… Meh… But With Spoilers!”

WCW Starrcade 1997

Last month, I did a week’s worth of wrestling musings covering seven different Starrcade events. One of the events I contemplated looking at for this period was Starrcade 1997, a somewhat important WCW event in that it was the culmination of a year-long build up to the eventual confrontation between Hollywood Hulk Hogan and the Man Called Sting. I have never watched this show. Never got the opportunity to do so.

So here we are… twenty years after the fact, I finally get around to watching this in all its glory… and I instantly regret it.

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The Sad Case Of TNA Impact Wrestling

Happy Holidays to all and stuff.

At the moment, I’m currently working on compiling the Winners And Losers of 2017 list and as I was gazing through the list, I spot an entry that has me stumped. See, the way this works is that I list said winners and losers (along with some “middle grounders” that fit neither category but deserve mention regardless) and I would add some brief thoughts. And when it came to this one entry, I had a difficult time coming up with a brief statement that would sum up this entry as a whole in 2017.

It got to a point where I started writing… and kept writing… and kept writing… until I had several paragraphs worth of text on screen. So for a list format, that’s too much… but for its own blog post, that’s perfectly fine. So here we are… talking about said entry that should be obvious from the post title and the image above.

Continue reading “The Sad Case Of TNA Impact Wrestling”

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.

Oh… Speaking Of Which

Because we needed to give Street Fighter some (more) love, I guess…

Capcom will be releasing a Street Fighter 30th Anniversary collection of most of the 2D Street Fighters for a total of twelve games. This includes the original Street Fighter game, the first five iterations of Street Fighter II (Original, Champion Edition, Hyper Fighting, Super SF2, and Super Turbo), the three Street Fighter Alpha games (but no Alpha 2 Gold or Alpha 3 Upper – unless those are “hidden” games), and all three iterations of Street Fighter III (New Generation, Second Impact, and Third Strike).

Despite whatever half-hearted pot-shots that I might toss towards the series’ current direction, this is actually not a bad deal. Would’ve been nice if they had included something like HD Remix (though I could understand why they wouldn’t; it might take away from the specialness of Ultra SF2) or maybe a version of Street Fighter I that isn’t total shit, but this isn’t too bad, either. And four of the games even have online play for those who care for that sort of thing.

Expect fists to fly in May.

The Deal With Tarantino And Star Trek Movie…

Source article here.

I’ll just leave this here for folks to read for themselves the current developments on this “great idea” film director Quentin Tarantino has for a Star Trek movie that people are considering. But for now, only two things come to mind.

Firstly, the idea of an R-rated Star Trek movie (that isn’t a porn parody or anything like that) is interesting and might be worth visiting. Whether it ends up being this “great idea” or not is an entirely different story, but it’s something different for Star Trek and something that could give the film franchise another boost, so to speak.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, if Tarantino persuades Paramount that they need to give Samuel L. Jackson a role in the movie, here’s hoping they give him a part more suited to his particular talents than George Lucas did with the incredibly lame Mace Windu. (No, fuck off with that expanded universe crap that makes him “badass” or anything. I wanted a Jedi that was loud, bolsterous, and swears a lot… that kind of SLJ character.)

Oh, one more thing… this would be a perfect opportunity to bring back Bill Shatner to play a role, whose sole purpose for existing is to get killed. You can even call the movie Star Trek: Kill Bill.

I don’t know. Just a thought… but let’s see where this goes. If it goes anywhere at all.