Tag: Disney

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Disney’s six-part miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi is so bad I was certain it was the work of Jar Jar Abrams. But no, it is the creation of someone named Deborah Chow.

Disney’s first Star Wars series, The Mandalorian, got off to a promising start. But I feared it was running out of ideas when the story kept returning to Tatooine. Another series, The Book of Boba Fett, never left Tatooine, and the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries begins and ends there. Tatooine rips off a lot from Arrakis, but sorry, it is not the most important planet in the universe. (more…)

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I was surprised at how much I liked Disney’s live action Star Wars series Andor, so I watched the Mouse’s next Star Wars series, Ahsoka. It was a trudge across vast, dreary plains of pulp, nostalgia, and estrogen-sodden wokeness — punctuated with peaks of genuine magic and drama.

The character of Jedi apprentice Ahsoka Tano, an orange-skinned alien, was created by George Lucas and Dave Filoni and first introduced in the 2008 animated film The Clone Wars, which focused on her relationship with Anakin Skywalker. (more…)

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All new Star Wars stories, like the denizens of a vast coral reef, need to inhabit nooks and crannies in the universe and narrative created by George Lucas. But there are better and worse ways to do this.

Disney has produced two kinds of Star Wars products: new and original stories and cynical, safe, nostalgic remakes. Four out of five of Disney’s Star Wars movies fell into the safe and cynical camp. (See my reviews of The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker, and Solo.) (more…)

The White Snake Enchantress, Toei, 1958

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

“Anime” is simply short for “animation.” It is not some type of “con” to trick adults into watching a “cartoon,” which I have already defined in the previous part by way of debunking Travis LeBlanc’s assertion own assertions. (more…)

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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny isn’t good enough or bad enough to merit a review. Which I guess is a review in and of itself.

I enjoyed the first three Indiana Jones films a good deal. They aren’t serious movies, but they are well-made, entertaining piffle, with Harrison Ford as an unusual hero who combines two-fisted paleo-masculinity with intellect and taste. But I don’t think I was ever young enough to take the character of Indiana Jones all that seriously. Thus I am pretty much immune to a big-budget nostalgia-fest about the character. If I were feeling nostalgic, I would simply watch the original films. Or better, just listen to John Williams’ wonderful music. (more…)

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When I saw Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, I was convinced that David Lynch is an essentially conservative and religious filmmaker, with a populist and mystical bent. Arguing that thesis was an uphill battle as his work got increasingly dark in the nineties. Many people interpreted Lynch’s portrayals of quirky, salt-of-the-Earth white Americans as parody, his mysticism as arbitrary weirdness, and his depictions of evil and violence as inconsistent with having a conservative and religious moral center. (more…)

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Tolkien world experienced two huge events this month.

Amazon announced last week the diverse cast for its new Lord of the Rings series. Shortly thereafter, Christopher Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien’s editor and the guardian of his father’s legacy, died. (Hopefully, there was no connection between the events.) (more…)

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Extraordinary! There are three—maybe four—Pinocchio films now in development or newly released. They all promise to reveal dark, hitherto unexplored aspects of the famous marionette’s saga. One is a Robert Downey Jr. project that’s been hemming and hawing since about 2012. Initially Downey was planning to play both Geppetto and the title role. Now he’s older, so he’ll just play Geppetto. A new live-action Pinocchio premiered last month in Italy. (more…)

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In memory of Raven.

Even I didn’t expect Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker to be this bad. It is simply a terrible movie: derivative, incoherent, arbitrary, superficial, and deeply boring and uninvolving—despite, or maybe because of, the frenetic action sequences, dazzling duels, and effects so special they’ll leave carbon scoring on your eyeballs. (more…)

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“Help us, Dave Filoni. You’re our only hope.”

On December 20th, J. J. “Death Star” Abrams and Disney Corp. will complete the destruction of the Star Wars saga that many of us have loved since childhood, while raking in untold millions by cynically exploiting nostalgia for the mythos they are desecrating. So pass the popcorn, because I’ll be right there, dear readers, to review it for you. (more…)

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Like many in the Alt-Right, I am quite suspicious of the American entertainment industry and its effects on our subconscious assumptions as a society. As Joe Biden stated, “gay marriage” is a consequence of “Jewish leaders in the [entertainment] industry” and their “immense influence” over our culture. Biden’s statement was discussed so widely because all who heard it recognized that he was speaking a seldom-voiced truth: that the progressive social degeneracy of the last 50 years is due in large measure to Hollywood and a certain class of studio moguls and filmmakers. (more…)