Is the Star Wars Christmas Special up on Disney? I’ve heard it’s a lost gem.
It most certainly is.
Spoiler alert...just in case
Well she’s Rey Skywalker now, just because she is better than Anakin and Luke and Obi Wan just because she is; without any training or explanation (other than somehow being Palpatine’s granddaughter). So Palpatine actually wins because his offspring is now the most powerful force-user in the galaxy and the Skywalkers lose because they’re all dead and Rey Palpatine has stolen all of their legacy.
It’s just so fucking ridiculous. I was mad when Lucas had Greedo shoot first because it destroyed the entire story arc of Solo from a shoot first outlaw mercenary to his shock return at the denouement of the battle over Yavin 4. Abrams (and Rian Fucking Johnson) took the entire 6-movie saga - of Anakin Skywalker’s rise, fall and ultimate fulfillment of his destiny as the chosen one - and threw it over their shoulder like it was Hobbit Luke’s light saber.
Spoiler-laden rant
The empire not gone, Palpatine’s not dead, Han and Leia’s son is a murderous cuck (a 30-something somehow still ravaged by teenaged angst) and the force is just this thing that does whatever Rey wants or needs whenever she feels like it. Oh and she’s better than Kylo and even Luke with a light saber, having trained by swinging it a rock for a minute or two. Speaking of which, she can lift a couple of dozen large boulders - first try - oh and she can shoot down three Tie fighters with one shot, her very first shot ever from the Falcon’s gun turret. The Falcon, of course, which she can fly better than Han and Chewie first time in the pilot’s seat, and she knows how to fix its workings to make it better. And she is more good than Luke because she came out of her dark-side cave without any lingering effects (or having learned anything).
Have I missed anything? Fuck me.
My wife and I gave ourselves a new Apple TV 4K goober for Christmas, since our years-old Apple TV couldn’t deal with Disney+, HBOMax, and so on. I set it up this afternoon, so now I can find out what the Mandalorian hoopla is all about. I figure if it’s got Gus Fring in it, it’s probably ok.
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We’re watching Jingle Jangle on Netflix, which is oddly the first Steampunk Christmas musical.
Neil, is this code that you’ve been kidnapped?
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I’m a fan of Steampunk. Those aren’t incompatible.
ETA: I wouldn’t recommend the movie Particularly, though as Christmas movies go it’s middlin. Visually it’s pretty fun. What’s remarkable about the movie is that it is, in fact, a Steampunk Christmas musical. That’s just not the sort of thing one expects.
As usual, Luke wins the internet again.
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“Discovery” S3 finale. I must admit, “Let’s fly!” gave me chills.
Spoilers
I am left wondering sadly what will happen with Saru and Stamets - and by association, Hugh - who now seem superfluous to requirements for operating Discovery.
I had really high hopes for season 3 and came away from it kinda not liking it. Pretty disappointing since season 2 was so good.
Spoilers
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I must admit to getting a little weary of the “our crew have to save the entire galaxy/universe” plot lines. The stakes need to be high enough to make the story mean something, but in the past Star Trek TV series have been rather judicious about cranking them to the max like that. Even DS9, which had pretty high stakes for most of the show’s run, allowed the overall drama to simmer for multiple seasons, letting it slightly boil over at strategic points while taking time to tell other stories for the purposes of character development. Discovery has told these types of stories for two consecutive seasons now, and it’s done so at a breakneck page. And this was after Picard S1 basically did the same thing. It stops being plausible at some point. I feel like I’m watching 24 and wondering how one guy keeps finding himself up to his eyeballs in shit after seven seasons and has to be the hero. (And yet, The Expanse is basically the same - a crew of four people constantly find themselves in situations with massive far-reaching ramifications - but the writing is better and they are able to let the story build slowly and organically.) I’m beginning to think that if they want to tell these huge stories in a serialized format they’re going to need 20-25 episodes. 13 wasn’t enough.
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The peripheral bridge characters (Detmer, Owo, Nilsson, Bryce, Rhys) were used a little better this year, but they’re still underdeveloped. Nillson in particular: they drop hints here and there that she’s the ship’s second officer (we saw her at the conn when Saru and Burnham were both off the ship), yet she barely gets any lines or anything to do and is almost completely absent from the finale until all the conflict is over. Again I am reminded of DS9 and its sheer volume of recurring-but-not-main characters (I can think of 15-20 off the top of my head), how well they were written, and how much the show made you care about them whether you loved them or hated them.
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What the fuck did they do to Stamets’ character? This season was a huge step backward for him, and that has nothing to do with the spore drive.
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The Burn, a cataclysmic event that killed millions, stranded trillions, and fundamentally upheaved the nature of economics, politics, and space travel throughout at least the entire quadrant for over a century, was caused by a kid who cried when his mom died? Lame. In hindsight, The Burn would’ve been better off left as a MacGuffin or a minor plot line that gets resolved in 1-2 episodes, and make the season arc only about the Federation/Emerald Chain conflict which I found a lot more interesting.
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I like Saru but he sucked as a captain, and the show made the mistake of trying to paint him as a good captain. Tilly is my favorite character on the show and has risen into my top ten favorite Trek characters ever, but choosing her as first officer made no sense. Nilsson was probably pissed.
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Mirror universe Georgiou could’ve been completely absent from the season and it wouldn’t have really affected anything. In hindsight it’s clear that her presence at all was simply to boost her profile for the Section 31 spinoff that’s in development.
I was ok with it, but I don’t disagree with any of that. There were some serious flaws in what they chose to pursue and what they didn’t.
Spoiler
They went nowhere with the infection of Detmer by Control (or something like it).
Do they not plan these things out in advance? Marvel built a “universe” of 20+ movies with fewer plot holes and dropped plot points than a 13-season TV show.
I didn’t make it past the first episode.
BTW, in case anyone is flipping through Netflix and is intrigued by “The Midnight Sky”, you can skip it. A worthless execution of an interesting concept.
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Agree. I was hoping good things but it’s a flop. Sci-fi presentation = 8. Story = 2. At best.
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I was intrigued, and gave up after about 20 minutes.
For All Mankind season 2 dropping on Feb 19.
WandaVision
What the fuck is that all about?
I have tried to figure that out by looking at the teasers, and I have absolutely no idea.
I have watched Episode 1. Same.
I have included below what I know by doing some research. There are, I guess, some mild spoilers below, in case you just want to go in blind and figure it out as it goes along.
Spoilers
This show kicks off Phase 4 of the MCU. Phase 4 looks to be all about the multiverse and time travel. Wanda, after losing her brother and Vision, has mentally snapped, and with the “help” (she’s likely being manipulated) of an outside force, she has created this sort of “bubble universe” where she can happily live with Vision, but in the style of TV sitcoms she grew up watching. The style of the shows will start in the 60’s or so, moving all the way up to the 2000’s.
SWORD, an off-shoot of SHIELD, are the good guys outside the bubble trying to help Wanda. Jimmy Woo, the probation officer of Scott Lang in Ant-Man is one of them, as well as Monica Rambeau, the kid (now an adult) from Captain Marvel.
The outside force manipulating Wanda is thought to be Mephisto (this is not absolutely confirmed), which is the MCU’s version of, well… Satan, I guess. He could be one of the big baddies of this phase.
Wanda will also be in Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, likely as the villain, with Dr. Strange trying reel her back in.
Interestingly, Guardians of the Galaxy III was originally supposed to kick this phase off, but the whole James Gunn firing/rehiring debacle delayed it.
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