Wednesday, November 27, 2024

Star Trek Unification (Kirk's Journey to the afterlife)

With the help of the latest special effects, William Shatner along with Sam Witwer, who played in Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars animation, play James T. Kirk at different ages.  It is about Kirk's journey to the afterlife.



Although it is good, I'm not as blown away by it.  The special effects are a novelty.  It is a lovely way to say goodbye to Kirk.  Kirk seeing his younger self reminds me of 2001, A Space Odyssey.  

Lenard Nimoy died almost ten years ago.  All our old favorite actors are dying off, which makes this all the more touching.

The final scene looks like it could have been shot in "The Volume" which is a Lucasfilm spherical stage where all the walls are screens to create artificial scenery.  The Mandalorian series was created primarily on this stage.

Tuesday, November 26, 2024

Black Friday Deal: 99¢/month for a year | Hulu

https://www.hulu.com/gma

This was the deal I was waiting for.  However, the fine print tells me that I am ineligible because I was a member within the last month.  I click on "Get this deal" and it doesn't give it to me.

I don't like the ads, but I like saving money.   

Disney+ has a ton of content, but I've seen most of it.  I'm especially fond of the Star Wars shows, but there are also Marvel, Pixar, and National Geographic.

Thursday, November 21, 2024

A Disney Holiday Short: The Boy & The Octopus

This qualifies as the sweetest commercial I have ever seen.  It is the usual Disney tripe but is sweet nevertheless.  


This is pretty good PR from a mega-corporation.

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

The irony of loving Star Wars too much




@john2001plus
0 seconds ago

Hey Thor, 

I have many thoughts, so sorry if this goes long. 

The ideal sequel trilogy would have been one of Luke, Han, and Leia, but we needed that thirty years ago before the actors got too old.  Disney was stuck where they couldn't continue the story right after Return of The Jedi, so they tried to go down a path of discarding the old characters and introducing new ones.  The decision to discard the old characters seems like a bad one because the fans wanted the old characters.  With current technology, it is not too late to have a story that takes place after Return of the Jedi. 

No offense to anyone, but Star Wars fans appear to be very hard to please.  If a new movie or show is not exactly what they want or expect, they will claim it is bad when it might be entertaining.  We saw that with the prequel trilogy where right away people claimed that Episode 1 was terrible.  However, I loved the entire prequel trilogy. George Lucas tried to make every movie different, but this turned off some people who claimed, "Not my Star Wars." 

The Last Jedi is a dilemma for most people.  It has some bad dialogue.  It has a couple of bad scenes.  It could have been a better film.  However, I will swear to my dying breath that it is an entertaining movie because I found it entertaining.  I enjoyed it quite a bit.  Would I have preferred something a little different?  Yes, but I don't see it as my story to tell.  People are upset by how the movie handled Luke, but I was open to a story about Luke that was different from what I expected.  Had the movie gone exactly the way we expected it could have been boring. 

There is a difference between a movie or show being entertaining and great.  We want Star Wars to be great.  However, it isn't always great, but that doesn't necessarily make it bad.  I like watching shows about Star Wars and I enjoyed most of the TV series even if they were far from the greatness that we wanted them to be.  In particular, I liked Kenobi quite a bit. 

I have a big problem with The Rise of Skywalker.  Bringing back Palpatine undermines Darth Vader's sacrifice.  The movie has other issues.  It is a weaker film than The Last Jedi.  It is a disappointing conclusion to the trilogy.  However, I did enjoy watching it and I might enjoy watching it again.  But I hold movies to a higher standard than I do TV shows. It could have been much better. 

I have a concern that the Star Wars story is too limited in scope to keep making more movies and shows. According to George Lucas, Star Wars is a soap opera about the Skywalker family.  That story has already been told.  Anything that follows is either going be be repeating the same story, or too different for the fans to embrace.  I think that we both would like to see a new set of characters set in a different period.  The Acolyte tried to do this but was mediocre at best. 

Best wishes, 

John Coffey

Sunday, November 3, 2024

Why critics kinda hated the Empire Strikes Back


@john2001plus
I was turning 20 when the movie came out.  The critics loved it.  The Louisville movie critic called it an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10.  The movie blew me away and it is still my favorite movie.

We spent 3 years wondering if Darth Vader was really Luke's father.

This was released just five months after Star Trek The Motion Picture which was a bit of a bore.