Category: Movies

TV

Star Wars Rebels

The second season of the wonderful Star Wars Rebels animated series wrapped up last week on Disney XD. I’ve enjoyed this show since the first season and really appreciate how the creators of Star Wars Rebels have been using design elements that were created, but never used, for the original Star Wars trilogy. While this is a series seemingly directed towards children, see “animated” and “Disney,” non-the-less at times the stories of Star Wars Rebels have had a depth not present in most other series being produced these days.

Taking place before Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, Star Wars Rebels follows the crew of the ship the “Ghost” who are smugglers by day and proto-rebels by night. It’s sort’a equal parts Firefly and Star Wars in that respect. But Star Wars Rebels also deals with all sorts of interesting ideas like if droids served in the rebellion, would they see themselves as veterans? And most importantly, how does Jedi Knight Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr.) train his apprentice Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray) without Bridger being lured to the dark side?

Plus there’s a young Darth Vader (no joke, voiced by Darth Vader himself James Earl Jones) who’s not quite as in-charge as he is in later years, called in almost like a relief pitcher in baseball when the lower “Inquisitors” can’t get the job done against the rebels.

In fact, I catch myself from time to time wondering why some episodes of Star Wars Rebels are more action oriented than story and plot oriented as so many episodes are. Then I have to remind myself; obvstentively Star Wars Rebels is a cartoon for kids. All the extra stuff that I love about the show is just an added benefit that most other animated series don’t bother with. A-

Art

The artist Euclase does some amazing Photoshop paintings featuring pop-culture figures like Tron, Furiosa and Riddick to name a very few. Her art is simply amazing and drool-worthy. Euclase’s work is, IMHO, in the same realm of that of the great James Bama.

Movies

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

So Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was released two weeks ago and did great at the box office. It received terrible reviews across the board but non-the-less the film broke all kinds of records and earned something like more than $460 million at the box office world-wide with $181 from the US alone on opening weekend. To put that number into perspective, Avengers: Age of Ultron earned $191 million its first weekend here in the US and went onto gross more than $1.4 billion worldwide.*

What does this mean for the comic book movies overall?

First, along with Deadpool which was R-rated and has made more than $600 million at the box office and will surly make loads more on home media, there’s no one way to make a superhero movie. Studios don’t have to follow the “Marvel Method;” or bright, shiny and poppy, in order to make a movie audiences are willing to see. If Marvel movies are going to be full of color and positivity, then DC seems to be taking the track of going dark and grim.

Which, with how much Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice had to contend with the movie taking years to be released and bad press and bad word-of-mouth, seems to have worked for DC. And with the upcoming Suicide Squad movie later this summer, a movie people are actually excited about, I can only imagine that the hits will keep coming for DC.

DC movie release schedule:

• Suicide Squad: August 5
• Wonder Woman: June 23, 2017
• Justice League 1: November 17, 2017
• The Flash: March 23, 2018
• Aquaman: June 27, 2018
• Batman: 2018
• Shazam: 2019
• Justice League 2: June 14, 2019
• Cyborg: April 3, 2020
• Green Lantern Corps: June 19, 2020

*Though Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice did have a massive drop in ticket sales from its first to second week in release. That being said the movie made a load of money its first week so I’m sure that it’ll be profitable, just not as profitable as other similar movies.

The Reading List

• NBC to Produce ‘A Few Good Men’ Live, Written by Aaron Sorkin
• ‘Superman,’ The Inside Story: Director Richard Donner Remembers Meeting Stallone to Play the Lead, Working With Brando, and a Near-Fatal Knife Attack

This week in pop-culture history

• King Kong opens in 1933.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey is released in 1968.
• In 1978 The TV series The Amazing Spider-Man debuts on CBS.
• The TV series Twin Peaks debuts in 1990 on ABC.