My Geek Life: Star Trek: Prodigy Theory

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So today I have a short edition of My Geek Life for you. The latest episode of Star Trek: Prodigy aired on CTV Sci-Fi Channel last night and because of something that happened in the episode, I came up with a theory. It has to do with the possibility of who the Diviner is. I don't have very much evidence but it's something I thought up while I was getting ready for bed last night. There will be spoilers for the first nine episodes of the season, so be aware of that as you read this post. With that out of the way, let's get into it.

Throughout these first nine episodes, we haven't learned a whole lot about the Diviner or his plans for the USS Protostar, a derelict Federation starship that looked too undamaged to have been abandoned by it's crew in an emergency situation. Especially if Starfleet hasn't gone looking for it. And yet, the Diviner was in posession of it. So here's my theory. The Diviner is actually a brainwashed Captain Chakotay. Here's my reasoning for this.

So, Chakotay was in command of the Protostar and he and his crew vanished, but Hologram Janeway doesn't know anything about it. If the crew had been forced to abandon ship, Hologram Janeway would've had some record of it. Instead the section of her memory, which contained the crew's final moments were blocked. We saw a piece of the recording, which showed Drednok, the second in command to the Diviner, appear behind Chakotay and Hologram Janeway but we don't even hear Chakotay getting murdered or captured or anything.

Also, the Diviner has been after the ship all season and he had posession of it under mysterious circumstances. I mean, the proto-warp drive would be as valuable to the Diviner as the Iconian Gateway was to the renegade Jem'Hadar in the DS9 episode, "To the Death", but he doesn't seem to want have any political stakes in the Delta Quadrant, or anywhere else for that matter, so, why does he want the ship? I think it's because Drednok is the person behind all of this, and had captured Chakotay, brainwashing and morphing him into the Diviner, which allowed him to go aboard the Protostar and block off that section of Hologram Janeway's memory files. It also allowed him to create Dark Hologram Janeway when he took the ship from the crew in this week's episode. 

There just seems to be too many coincidences for this to not be a thing. However, I could very easily be mistaken or they could just be making it seem like it's Chakotay, but it ends up being something completely different when we get part two of this episode next week for the mid-season finale. I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see.

I don't normally come up with these wild theories, because most of the time it's a waste of time. Especially because I couldn't come up with something better than what the writers of my favourite shows and movies came up with when they wrote the shows and movies. But this time I couldn't help myself. And like I said, it's just a theory, and I could be 100% wrong about it, but I don't want to discount anything with this show because these writers can be sneaky and can pull a bait and switch on viewers pretty easily. 

That's all I wanted to say for today. Just a quick My Geek Life post for today. I'm going to hold off and do my next Movies I Saw in Theatres post next week. I'm not going to have a movie review up for you tomorrow either. I'm gonna be starting to watch the Jumanji 4-Movie Collection Blu-ray set that my sister got me for my birthday. I'll do a review on all four movies and the Blu-ray set when I've finished going through it. I want to do more physical media stuff on this blog. So until then have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

The Land Before Time (1988) Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Saturday. Today I'm going to be talking about a movie that, while my parents rented it for me a couple of times, I didn't own it on VHS or DVD until I became an adult. Now I own it on VHS AND DVD. So let's go back to prehistoric times and talk about The Land Before Time. Let's get into it!

I think The Land Before Time is my favourite Steven Spielberg era Don Bluth film. Next to An American Tail of course. The reason is that this movie is actually pretty simple. It's five Dinosaur children trying to get to the Great Valley, an area that hasn't been affected by drought and natural disasters like earthquakes. And it's short too. The movie is only an hour and nine minutes long, which is shorter than most animated feature films were by 1988.

The voice cast of this movie is pretty cool. Pat Hingle is the narrator and I only know him as Commissioner Gordon from the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher Batman movies. The only other members of this cast that I recognize are, the late (and great) Will Ryan, who voices Petrie, and Candace Hutson, who voices Cera. Will Ryan voiced my childhood as he was Grubby in the Teddy Ruxpin franchise, he voiced Willie the Giant in Mickey's Christmas Carol, he voiced Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore and other Winnie the Pooh shows and specials in the early '80s, and he voiced a bunch of characters in various Don Bluth animated movies in the '80s and '90s, which are too numerous to count. Let's just say his voice showed up alot in the movies and shows that I watched when I was a kid. 

While this is the only movie that I've seen Candace Hutson in, I've actually seen her on VHS without realizing who it is. She is one of the kids in the 1990 direct-to-video episode of Disney Sing-Along Songs, Disneyland Fun which is one of my all time favourite Disney Sing-Along Songs tapes. For those of you who have seen it, Candace Hutson is the girl whose eyes go wide on the Jungle Cruise during "Follow the Leader".

Like I said earlier, my parents rented the movie on VHS for me when I was a kid. I think they may have only rented it once or twice though I do remember seeing the movie at Rogers Video. I probably also watched it on TV at least once too. But as the 2010s came along, I didn't have access to it anymore. But in 2017 my sister bought it for me on DVD while I was recovering from surgery, and I watched it up in my bedroom on either my laptop or my dad's portable DVD player and I loved it as much as I did when I was a kid. A few weeks ago I ended up getting it on VHS, also because of my sister. Her and her partner had gone to see his family up north for the holidays, and they'd promised to see if he still had any of his old VHS tapes there. The Land Before Time was the only one he still had, and they brought it home for me. And that's how I watched it last night for this review. 

I think one of my favourite parts of the movie is how the five child Dinosaurs, who are all of different species of Dinosaur, worked together, despite their differences, to take down their common enemy, the Sharptooth, or as we know it, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. You know, I'm wondering if the producers of Super Sentai took a look at this movie before deciding which Dinosaurs to use for Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger, because all three of the actual Dinosaurs on that show, the Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, and Pteranodon, are in this movie. Just an interesting thought.

Overall this is a wonderful movie. I don't think I've seen any of the direct-to-video sequels, though the only one I would've seen is The Land Before Time II: The Great Valley Adventure since that came out in 1994. And I think pretty much everyone who grew up in the late '80s and into the '90s saw this movie. Even if it's not their favourite movie, they still saw it at least once. I know I see it in most people's VHS Collection. Particularly if they were born sometime between 1984 and 1996. 

And that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back next week with lots more posts. I've decided I'm going to split up part 3 of my Movies I Saw in Theatres series into two parts, because I saw alot of movies in the 2010s, and as you saw with part 2, 21 movies made for a fairly long post. So stay tuned for part 3 next week and part 4 the week after that, with part 3 covering 2010-2015, and part 4 covering 2016-2019. So until then have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Movies I Saw in Theatres Part 2: 2000-2009

 Hey everyone! Happy Friday! We made it through another week. Today I'm going to be talking about all the movies that I saw in theatres from the year 2000 until 2009. Looking at the posters in the folder for this post, I have a total of 21 movies that I saw in the 2000s. So not a whole ton, but ten more than I saw in the '90s. So let's get into it by teleporting back to the summer of 2000 when I was about to go into grade 8.

The only movie I saw in the year 2000 was Titan A.E. Back in the year 2000 I still wasn't going to see movies the way I would in the late 2000s and into the 2010s. I was going to turn 14 that December, and my parents couldn't afford to take my siblings and I to the movies all the time so we were still seeing more movies at home on VHS than we were at the theatre. I loved Titan A.E. though. It was very unique compared to the animated movies I'd watched in the '90s. It was the period where Science Fiction was starting to become huge again thanks to Star Wars being back in theatres with the prequel trilogy and EVERYONE seemed to want to do a Sci-Fi animated movie. Fox had Titan A.E. while Disney had Atlantis: The Lost Empire (a great movie) and Treasure Planet (not as good, but still enjoyable) and Warner Bros. had The Iron Giant the previous summer. 

I don't remember who I went to see the movie with. I think my mom took my siblings and I, but that was also my second summer going to Teens First Summer Camp and I think we may have gone to see it that week on one of our outing days. I honestly don't remember. I just remember going to see it on the big screen and getting the poster for the comic book prequel to the movie, which you can see the cover of above.

The next movie I saw was Digimon: The Movie. I said that Titan A.E. was the only movie that I saw in theatres in 2000, but now that I'm thinking of it, as well as looking up the home video release date for Digimon: The Movie, I think I actually saw it in 2000 as well. It came out in October of 2000, and it was released on home video on February 6th, 2001, four months after it had debuted in theatres. So I went to see it with my mentor, Ahmed, from the Teens First Mentorship Program. This was actually our last outing together. So we went to see this and I loved it. I'm just going to come right out and say it, but I like Digimon better than I like Pokemon. There...I said it. I know, blasphemy, but the thing is, I watched Digimon longer than I watched Pokemon because there was an actual storyline in Digimon and it was different every season. But, Pokemon was the same thing every episode. Ash would catch a Pokemon, he'd fight a trainer, Team Rocket would try to steal Pikachu, and fail miserably by the end of the episode because they were inept morons who never actually trained their Pokemon. 

Anyway, I loved that I got to see Digimon: The Movie in theatres. Though that Angela Anaconda short was annoying. I didn't mind it so much in theatres, but...then they put it on the VHS release AND then the DVD release as part of the movie, rather than as a bonus feature, and yeah, it sucks. I later owned Digimon: The Movie on VHS, and I still own it on VHS today. Though the copy I have today is one I picked up at Chumleigh's in Kingston rather than the original that I got twenty-one years ago. 

This next movie is an experience like no other. So my parents had a friend who took the entire family to see Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for you Americans) in theatres. I'm not a big Harry Potter fan. I enjoy the books and I love the movies, but I haven't been sorted into a house, I've never taken the quizzes, I don't go on Pottermore, and I was never on any of the Harry Potter message boards or written Harry Potter fan fiction. I hadn't read any of the books by the time this movie came out. My sister had read the first four books, but I hadn't. I knew about Harry Potter as the first four books had appeared in my Scholastic Book Order catalogues in grades 6 through 8. It wasn't really my thing. This was also the first movie I saw in theatres, besides Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace that had breathtaking CG effects. Yes, I know, they don't hold up very well now, 20 years later, but at the time they were groundbreaking.

The first movie I saw in the summer of 2002 was Mr. Deeds starring Adam Sandler, and Winona Ryder. My siblings and I were up at the cottage that summer, and my grandmother took me to see the movie in a nearby town. I'd never seen an Adam Sandler movie before and while I don't really like Adam Sandler as an actor, I've seen three movies of his. This is the only one I saw in theatres. I enjoyed it. I'd later end up seeing Big Daddy and Eight Crazy Nights on TV in like 2004 or 2005. Mr. Deeds is still my favourite Adam Sandler movie though. It was also my first time seeing Conchata Ferrell, who played Berta on Two and a Half Men, Peter Gallagher, who played Sandy Cohen on The O.C., and John Turturro, who played Agent Simmons in the all of the Transformers movies except for Age of Extinction.

The next movie I saw was the first movie I ever saw with a friend, the first date I ever went on with someone I had a crush on, and it was actually a substitute for another movie I had wanted to see. So earlier in the year my friends and I had planned to go see Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones after the school year was over as a treat for getting through the year. My friend Kelly and I had this planned for months. But I wasn't able to go because of a family thing, and my friend Keira couldn't go because she had to work. She and I decided we would just go see it together when we had the chance. However, it was August by the time we had a chance to go see the movie, and, well, by that time Attack of the Clones wasn't playing in theatres anymore. And in August, other than The Master of Disguise, which Keira had already seen, nothing was out that either of us really wanted to see. So we picked Austin Powers in Goldmember because, even though I had never seen the previous Austin Powers movies, though that would change at the beginning of 2003, I was interested in watching it because it meant I could spend time with Keira. 

I remember it well because they played the teaser trailer for Scooby-Doo, which had come out earlier that year, in June. And in the trailer you go through this empty mansion, and once you get to the library, you see a figure in shadow staring out the window. We all thought it was a trailer for a new Batman movie (we were three years away from Batman Begins at this point), then the shadow moved and it was revealed to be Scooby-Doo. I knew the movie had come out because I'd seen the TV spots. But for some reason, even though the movie was already out, the theatre that Keira and I went to was still playing the old teaser trailer from earlier in the year, it was really weird. Anyway we both enjoyed Austin Powers in Goldmember and we ended up quoting the movie in our Commtech  (Communications Technology) class at school for a week, or more. 

The final movie I saw in theatres in 2002 was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Like the year before with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, my parents's friend took us to see it. The movie itself still has the innocence that Chris Columbus brought to the first movie, but it is a slightly darker movie than the first one. Same as how the book is slightly darker than the first one is. I'll talk about this more when I get around to reviewing the Harry Potter series, both the books and the movies.

The first movie that I saw in theatres in 2003 was actually a movie from 2002. My high school started a semestered system in the 2002-2003 school year, and the semesters were set up so the semester ended and we had exams in January instead of before the Christmas holidays, which is kind of stupid in a way because we still had assignments hanging over our heads and prepwork for the exams, but that's neither here nor there. So Keira, Kelly, Kelly's boyfriend at the time, and I decided to go see The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on the weekend before we went back to school after our exams. I think we started planning it out as soon as we got back to school after the holidays. But, once again, our plans didn't go the way we'd intended them to.

Keira wasn't able to make it because she had to work or something came up at the last minute, and then Kelly and her boyfriend broke up so he was out and it ended up just being Kelly and I. Which was fine because I liked Kelly and it was nice getting to spend some time with her alone since we didn't get to do that a whole lot at school and I wasn't exactly having people over after school or on weekends, aside from Garrett, since he was the only friend I had who lived in biking distance of my house and didn't require a ride from a parent like the rest of my friends did. My grandfather drove us into the city to the usual theatre that I'd been going to since I went to see Titanic in 1998. We had a good time.

After the movie Grandpa picked us up again so we could take Kelly home. Now my grandfather loved to tease me about girls. Kelly and Keira in particular, since Kelly was one of my best friends, and Keira, well, Keira and I had a mutual thing for each other and everybody knew it. That evening though he'd behaved himself while Kelly was in the car. As we got close to Kelly's house, she turned around and asked me why I'd had a crush on her the year before. Yes, I'd asked Kelly out midway through my first year of high school, before things between Keira and I changed, she'd said no, so we didn't date. She asked this in front of my grandfather, who was driving. I answered to the best of my ability and as soon as Kelly was out of the car, my grandfather started teasing me, which I took without any problems. See, the movies I saw in the 2000s are the ones with the best stories.

That summer my parents took my siblings and I to see Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl at the Drive-In. It had been ten years since they'd taken us to see Jurassic Park at the Drive-In and Drive-Ins had disappeared for the most part by 2003. In fact there was only one near our place and it was still a good 40 minute drive away. And they only played new movies that were near the end of their theatrical run. A friend of my sister's joined us. I remember because we had a station wagon at the time and I had to sit in the trunk facing backwards. It was a great movie and we eventually got it on VHS. That was the last movie I saw in 2003 because I had a very important operation that ended up changing my life forever and I spent the rest of September and October recovering from it while trying to keep up with my schoolwork. 

The only movie I saw in theatres in 2004 was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Except it wasn't a November/December release, it was a summer release. So my parents took my siblings and I, or maybe it was just my sister and I, to see it as a treat for getting decent marks (exceptional marks in the case of my siblings) on our report cards at the end of the school year. 

Herbie: Fully Loaded is the first of two movies I saw in theatres in 2005. My dad is a huge Herbie the Love Bug fan. He has all sorts of toys and models, as well as all of the movies, including Fully Loaded, on DVD. So when Fully Loaded came out, it came out just after Father's Day, so I took my dad to see it in theatres one weekday morning. I had finished exams, so school was done for me for the summer, my sister had also finished exams, and my brother was still in middle school, so his school year wasn't over yet. My dad had a day off in the middle of the week, so we went in the morning. 

The second movie I saw in theatres in 2005 was the Wes Craven psychological thriller, Red Eye, starring Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams. It's the first time I'd ever seen them in anything as I hadn't seen Batman Begins yet, and wouldn't until it came out on DVD later in the year. I got tickets for the movie because the owner of a local hobby store had them and asked me if I wanted them since he couldn't use them. I accepted being that I was 18, going on 19 at that point. I invited my best friend Brad, and our friend, Lagina to come with me. They agreed and it was my first experience going to the movies with a group that wasn't my family or part of an organized group like Teens First. This was the last movie I saw in theatres in 2005 as we ended up watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on DVD over the Christmas holidays.

I didn't see any movies in theatres in 2006. But in 2007 I saw two. The first was Transformers, directed by Michael Bay and written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. And I didn't see it with family or even with Brad. Instead I saw it with my old classmate, Leslie, who I'd known since I started at Greely Elementary School in 1994, and her boyfriend Bryan, who had dated a friend of mine a few years earlier. I think it's because Leslie and Bryan were going to see it anyway and we were making plans to get together since I hadn't seen Leslie since we left Metcalfe Public School in June of 2001 and I hadn't seen Bryan since he and my friend broke up. At this point, I was 20 years old, had been out of high school for a year, and was about to start college in the fall. So this was a great chance for me to get to see them AND see the movie. 

The next movie that I saw in theatres in 2007, which also happens to be the last one I saw in theatres in 2007, was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. My sister, her best friend, and I went to see it together as a last chance thing since I was starting college in the fall and wouldn't have as much time to go to the movies. It's also the last Harry Potter movie that I got to see in theatres, and the rest I only got to see on DVD. I enjoyed this one, but Professor Umbridge really gets to me because she's so nasty and is so pleasant about it.

The first movie that I saw in theatres in 2008 was called The Forbidden Kingdom, starring Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Michael Angarano (Will Powers in Sky High). I'm not a fan of Asian Cinema, having never seen Jet Li or Jackie Chan in any movie before this or since this, so this wouldn't normally have been my first choice. I don't even remember how Brad and I decided to even go see this movie in the first place. I think Brad saw the trailer online or I saw it on TV (YouTube was just starting to be a thing at this point) and we just decided to go. I liked it, but I haven't seen it since.

The next movie Brad and I saw together was The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan and stars Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Heath Ledger as the Joker. 2008 was a big year for superhero and comic book movies. Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk debuted to launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe and The Dark Knight became the highest grossing movie of 2008 and the fourth highest grossing movie at the time of it's release. I'm not a big fan of Christopher Nolan. The Dark Knight Trilogy was great, but I found The Dark Knight to be a little too brutal for my tastes, and the movie felt less focused on Batman and more focused on the Joker and Harvey Dent/Two-Face. It's still a fantastic movie, but it's not my favourite movie.

The final movie that I saw in theatres in 2008 was Star Wars: The Clone Wars, directed by Dave Filoni. This movie was a huge surprise for many Star Wars fans because Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was supposed to be the last Star Wars movie to be released, but then Lucasfilm announced this movie as a lead-in to the upcoming animated series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars. There had been a two season series of short episodes that ran in between shows and ran from 2003 to 2005 called Star Wars: Clone Wars, but The Clone Wars was the first full length Star Wars TV show since Droids and Ewoks ended in 1986. And basically, The Clone Wars revitalized Star Wars and prepared it for the journey it would find itself on when Disney bought Lucasfilm from George Lucas in 2012. 

Now we come to the end of the 2000s and in 2009 I saw four movies in theatres. The first one came out in late 2008 and it grabbed the world by storm. I couldn't watch TV without seeing a commercial for it. And people talked about it everywhere. Normally, it wouldn't've been a movie I'd have seen. However, I was taking a film studies course in my third semester in the General Arts and Sciences program in college. My buddy Andrew and I went to see this movie, because he was taking the same course and our professor recommended it to us for an assignment. I've never owned it on DVD or Blu-ray and I haven't seen it since that theatrical viewing experience that Andrew and I had. These days nobody talks about it anymore and I don't think anyone really remembers it. 

The next movie I went to see was X-Men Origins: Wolverine and this time I went with Brad. It's not a good movie and Brad kept pointing out all the changes made to Wolverine's origins and how badly Deadpool was handled in the movie. Yes my friends, Ryan Reynolds played Deadpool in the first Wolverine solo movie. There's a reason why he spent the first four or five years of the 2010s trying to get Deadpool made, and that reason is this movie. I actually didn't care that much about the changes made to Wolverine's origin story, mainly because I haven't read the comics containing his origins. Plus it seemed very in line with the little snippets we'd been shown in X2: X-Men United. So the movie didn't bother me that much. I didn't like it, but it wasn't bad. 

The next movie I saw was Star Trek directed by JJ Abrams and written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. This was the first, and only, Star Trek movie I saw in theatres with my family. It was our last big hurrah as a family with my brother starting university and my sister going back to university in Kingston. It's also the first Star Trek movie I'd ever seen in theatres as growing up I only saw them on VHS or VHS and DVD in the case of Star Trek Nemesis. I was a little apprehensive about seeing this movie because I'd already seen some negativity towards it online. But I enjoyed it as did the rest of my family.

The next movie I saw in theatres in 2009 was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen directed by Michael Bay and also written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. The 2007 movie was the first time I'd seen anything Transformers, aside from episodes of Beast Wars/Beast Machines. Reruns of the original animated series didn't air in my area when I was a kid, though the G2 toys came out and I saw the commercials for those. It just wasn't something I was interested in. But I enjoyed this movie AND I enjoyed the first movie. I don't remember who I went with to see this movie. I think it was just Brad and I that went, but we may have come with a friend of mine from college like Andrew or Steve. It was probably Andrew. I don't remember though, it's been almost 13 years since I went to see it in theatres.

The final movie that I saw in 2009 was G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Like Transformers, G.I. Joe was a show and toyline that I'd heard about, but never watched or played with. I mean it was violent and they were war toys, not something my parents wanted me to have. Plus it wasn't something I was even all that interested in. I wasn't exactly asking for G.I. Joe toys for my birthday and Christmas when I was a kid. Brad was interested in seeing this movie though, so we went with Kelly. I actually went in my wheelchair and Kelly sat between Brad and I in case I needed anything while the movie was on.

The 2000s was an interesting time for movies with CG being used for many of the effects that had previously been done practically, and films being shot digitally rather than on film. You could have movies like The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the Star Wars prequel trilogies. Even though I only saw 21 movies in those ten years, I got to see this transformation of cinema. And while I still saw more movies on VHS and DVD than I did in theatres, being in high school and college in this decade afforded me opportunities to see movies with friends for the first time in my life, and those are truly some of my absolutely favourite memories of all time. Even if some of them got a little...silly and ridiculous.

That's all I've got for you tonight. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of The Land Before Time, which I will be watching on VHS as soon as I've posted this blog post. So until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care!

My Geek Life #3: Moon Knight, Superman & Lois Season 2, Naomi, The Book of Boba Fett, Hype in Geekdom, and Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing well on this sunny and cold Thursday morning. I'm back for another edition of My Geek Life, the weekly segment where I talk about geeky topics that interest me from over the course of the week. I've got lots to talk about today, so let's get right into it.

It's not included in the title of this post, but we got some news from the Star Trek Universe two days ago. Star Trek: Discovery has been renewed for a fifth season, Star Trek: Prodigy has been renewed for a second season, and Star Trek: Lower Decks has been renewed for a fourth season. However the biggest news is that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will premiere on May 5th, 2022. Yes, Captain Pike, Mr. Spock, Number One and the crew of the Enterprise will be coming to our TV screens/computer screens/phone screens/tablet screens on Revenge of the Fifth, the day after May the 4th, a.k.a. Star Wars Day. I am actually excited now to see the new show despite the fact that I still have my reservations about it simply because it's the first season of a new Star Trek series, and Star Trek shows have a bad habit of having rough first seasons. I also don't trust Akiva Goldsman to keep his promise of making the show be more episodic than most TV shows are these days and returning to Star Trek's roots. They made the same promise with Discovery back in 2017 and that ended up not happening. But, like I said, despite those reservations, I am excited to see the show.

The big geek news of the week is that the trailer for Moon Knight dropped on Tuesday. I am not interested in this series at all. I watched the trailer of course, because I want things that don't interest me to change my mind. The trailer didn't. I just don't have any interest in the character. The trailer was really good though and people were extremely excited after they saw the trailer. I don't know if people are excited because they're fans of Moon Knight or if they're excited because it's another Marvel Disney+ series. Because I saw the exact same reactions for Hawkeye when that trailer dropped and many people were disappointed with the show. I'll be talking about this a little later on, but one of the things that Moon Knight might have a problem with is that it's going to be six episodes, just like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Hawkeye were. Which, in my opinion, severly hampers the storytelling capabilities of these shows.

I've talked about this in a previous post, but six episodes just isn't enough to tell the kinds of stories Marvel Studios seems to want to tell with these shows. Especially when each episode is a different length rather than all 40 to 50 minutes like most shows given an hour time slot on traditional TV have when you cut out the commercials. I get that there aren't as many Marvel movies coming out per year like there was pre-Infinity War, but it's only been a year since WandaVision came out and we've already had five Marvel shows, with the sixth one, Moon Knight, upcoming. While Star Wars Disney+ shows hav been following the same format as the Marvel ones, there have fewer Star Wars shows than Marvel. The Book of Boba Fett is only the third one following The Mandalorian and The Bad Batch. And while the smaller number of episodes doesn't seem to be working for Star Wars either, at least not since season 1 of The Mandalorian, they aren't trying to cram as many Star Wars shows into a single year as they are with Marvel. 

So yeah, the trailer for Moon Knight looks good, I just don't have any interest in the show or that character in general. I may be a comic book fan, but that doesn't mean I have to watch EVERY comic book based TV show and movie that comes out. 

Speaking of comic book based shows, I have a concern about season 2 of Superman & Lois and it doesn't have anything to do with my usual gripes about the quality of writing and character progression on CW shows either. For those of you who don't know, they're doing Doomsday as this season's big bad. Because apparently Superman shows and movies can't seem to do any other villains except for Lex Luthor, General Zod, and Doomsday. However, that also isn't the concern I have with this season. The concern I have with season 2 of Superman & Lois is they're doing Doomsday/the Death of Superman because the show won't be renewed for a third season. It got renewed for a second season with only two episodes having aired. We're now at that point in season 2, and it hasn't been renewed yet. I don't think it has to do with the potential sale of The CW to Nexstar Media Group, which, as of this writing, hasn't been finalized yet. There are so many factors that could play into the cancellation of the show. 

One of them is the fact that potential Superman movies are in development at Warner Bros. as well as an HBO Max limited series starring Val-Zod a.k.a. an alternate version of Superman from Earth-Two, who was created for the New 52 almost a decade ago. And apparently there can't be two Superman properties in different mediums at the same time. Which is why Tyler Hoechlin's Superman disappeared from Supergirl when Justice League came out in 2017. And why Superman & Lois magically went on hiatus just before Zack Snyder's Justice League came out last year. So I guess we'll find out in the near future. It's just concerning to me because this is the first Superman TV series since Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman ended in 1997. And no, Smallville doesn't count as a Superman show since Clark didn't actually become Superman until the last three minutes of the series finale.

The next thing I want to talk about is a brand new DC Comics based show on The CW called Naomi, which is based on a six issue comic book series created by Brian Michael Bendis in 2019 for DC Universe. Nobody's talking about it, The CW hasn't done much marketing for it, aside from announcing it's development and apparently a trailer dropped at some point, which nobody talked about, and apparently the first episode aired last week, on the same day as the premiere of season 2 of Superman & Lois. Again, nobody talked about it online. None of the geeky channels that I follow on YouTube did videos on it, and there was no discussion about it on Twitter or Facebook. I only found out that it was on because a YouTube channel I was watching, but don't follow, casually mentioned it in passing because the show's ratings are even lower than the rest of the DC Comics CW shows. It's not airing on TV here in Canada, but it's on iTunes. However, I will not be watching it. According to Wikipedia it's doing that Meta thing where she's a fan of the Arrowverse, specifically Superman, and then when she gets powers, she finds out that the Arrowverse actually exists. That's getting old REALLY fast. It probably won't last very long because nobody is watching it.

I'm pretty amazed that people aren't enjoying The Book of Boba Fett. Mainly because everyone was absolutely excited for it to come out. The fourth episode was better than the first three, but really it's not the greatest show, even by Star Wars standards. The Bad Batch was good, I just didn't have any interest in it. This show though, is bad because it suffers from having only seven episodes and way too much story to be told in that short amount of time and the story just isn't working, particularly with the way they chose to do the flashbacks. Which, by the way, aren't all that interesting to me. I prefer the present day storyline. But Star Wars has this need to chronicle EVERY single detail of the Star Wars Universe, which isn't necessary. Star Trek's started doing that lately too, it's just not as bad as Star Wars is about it.

And that brings me to my next topic, Hype in Geekdom. When I was a kid, I didn't have access to the AOL message boards for various franchises, so whenever a new Star Trek show was announced, a new Star Trek or Star Wars movie came out, or next comic book storyline happened, I had no way of knowing how other fans reacted to them. Like, I didn't know that Star Wars fans hated the Prequel Trilogy, or that Voyager and Enterprise weren't that well liked by Trekkies. All I knew was how I felt about them, and how my family, and the few friends I had who were into them, felt about them. So hype in geekdom wasn't a thing for me until I got online and started using social media and spending way too much time on Wikipedia and the respective Wikis for Star Trek and Star Wars that I found out about the animosity felt towards the Prequels as well as towards Voyager and Enterprise. 

Nowadays I have access to social media so I know exactly how fans feel about certain franchises at this point in time. For example, when the Hawkeye trailer dropped in September everyone loved the trailer. But when the show started at the end of November, I saw people getting disappointed after the first episode and more and more disappointed with each subsequent episode. The same thing has been happening with The Book of Boba Fett and could happen with Moon Knight as well. And I think it's because, as fans, we set our expectations way too high for these shows and movies. 

The reason we have the marketing campaigns that we do for these movies and shows is to get the audience excited to watch them. Especially in franchises like Star Trek, Star Wars, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's how they have viewers, even ones who aren't the big fans like us. The first timers basically. But, because we're fans of these things, Star Trek and Star Wars for me primarily, not so much the MCU as an entire entity, I think we put these shows and movies on pedestals that don't make any sense. Especially because all of them are made by human beings such as you and I (unless you're a Klingon, a Rodian, or Groot) and while every producer, writer, actor, costume designer, set designer, cinematographer, and director does their very best, they can't always make big hit shows or movies. Sometimes an episode (or a season) doesn't work as well in execution as it did on paper. Sometimes an actor doesn't put in their best performance. But they all still try and while the MCU has had one hit after another since 2008, with the exception of The Incredible Hulk, that was out of sheer luck because about half those movies could have not worked just as easily as they did work. 

Personally, I only get excited to a certain point. Unlike many other fans, I take a show or movie for what it is, rather than compare it to the previous show or movie. Like, I understand that Hawkeye and The Book of Boba Fett aren't the same as Loki or WandaVision and The Mandalorian and they aren't meant to be. So I know that the storytelling and character arcs are going to be very different on these shows than they are on those shows. But that doesn't mean they're bad. It's just, like I said earlier, the shorter episode count is harming shows like Hawkeye and The Book of Boba Fett because the writers are trying to cram so much story into those six or seven episodes, but it's story that was really meant for sixteen to twenty episodes. The second season of The Mandalorian had that same problem.

And that's why I'm a bit nervous about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds when it debuts in May. People have this certain expectation that it's going to be exactly like TOS. But I think that's an unrealistic expectation because it can't 100% be TOS. It can feel like the original '60s show, but it's never going to be the original '60s show. TOS worked for the time it was made in. Strange New Worlds or SNW as fans are referring to it as, is being produced in the 2020s for a 2020s audience. So returning characters like Spock, Uhura, and Christine Chapel aren't going to be exactly the same characters that Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, and Majel Barrett made iconic in the late '60s when TOS was on. Pike and Commander Reilly (Number One) won't be exactly the same Pike and Number One that Jeffrey Hunter and Majel Barrett played in the original TOS pilot, "The Cage" in 1964/1965. It's just not going to happen that way and I hope there aren't any Trekkies who think otherwise, because they'll be in for one hell of a disappointment, to paraphrase Doctor McCoy in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I'm excited for it, but I know to have more realistic expectations. Basically my expectation is that it's good. It doesn't have to be great, but it has to be good.

The last thing I want to talk about is a book I just started reading a few days ago. It's called Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street. Even though that title is no longer accurate because the book was published in 2008, it's now 2022 and Sesame Street continues to air, it was accurate for the time the book was published in. Because, unfortunately the book had to be published in 2008 and couldn't wait until whatever year Sesame Street actually goes off the air (I don't think that will ever happen, at least not in my lifetime).

I gave this book to my grandfather back in 2008. My mom and I found it at Chapters one day when we were there when I was on summer break. It was a weekday when my siblings and dad weren't home and Brad and I hadn't started going out and doing stuff yet (we started doing that later that summer). I bought it for my grandfather for his birthday. He always loved Sesame Street and we called him Grandpa Grouch because his favourite character was Oscar the Grouch, so I bought it for him for his birthday that year.

Sadly my grandfather passed away almost two years ago and while I immediately went for DVDs and VHS tapes at his and Nana's house, I was too afraid, at the time, to ask about the book. I didn't actually know if Grandpa still had it. My parents were at Nana's house on the weekend and I guess Nana found it because my parents brought it home for me. I started it that night at bedtime. It's good so far. Very detailed on the biographies of the key players of the creation of the series, which I think is the longest running children's television program ever. I can't seem to find anything to dispute that claim, so I think it's correct. 

I think that's going to be it for me for tonight. I'll be back tomorrow for the next part in my look at the movies I saw in theatres, which will focus on the 2000s. And I think I'm going to try to get a movie review in on Saturday because I'm planning on watching The Land Before Time (1988) on VHS tomorrow night. So until then have a wonderful night, stay safe, and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Who Framed Rogers Rabbit (1988) and Tummy Trouble (1989) Review

 Hey everyone! How's your weekend going? Mine's going pretty well. I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit last night and I gotta talk about it, because it is genius! So let's talk about it. It's more than 30 years old at this point so there will be "spoilers" in this review. Let's get started.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one of those movies that I watched alot when I was a kid but hadn't seen since the VCR on my TV/VCR combo set conked out on me ten years ago and we got rid of our original VHS collection. We never had it on DVD or Blu-ray. Until this past December when I got it for my birthday. I forgot how funny it is. Mostly because it had the style of gag favoured by Tex Avery, and the Looney Tunes people. Like when Valiant is trying to get the cuffs off of him and Roger, and while he's trying to saw at it, Roger just slips his hand out of his end of the cuffs. I laughed at that because it's such a cartoon thing to do but I love that he could only do it when it was funny to do so.

That's one of the things that I love about this movie. When you watch those old cartoons, it doesn't seem like the Toons have any rules to follow. But they do. They can't just pull a gag like it seems like they can. They have to do it when it's funny and that's it. Then there's the unspoken/unwritten rule that I picked up when Eddie was telling Roger about how his brother died and that a Toon killed him. Toons aren't supposed to pull a gag with the intent to physically harm anyone. Which is fascinating.

It's actually interesting to see ALL of these cartoon characters in one movie. I mean you have Disney characters interacting with Looney Tunes characters, Fleischer characters, Universal characters, and MGM characters. Which couldn't be done today because of licensing issues and things like that. Though I would still love to see a Roger Rabbit animated series similar to the recent Mickey Mouse series. 

I actually like Eddie Valiant. Bob Hoskins is an amazing actor and I love how natural his interaction with Roger is given that the voice of Roger, Charles Fleischer, was off to the side of the set, with a Roger mock up on the set since the animation would be added in post. The character himself is pretty interesting with his "fall from grace" with the Toons due to his brother's murder at the hand of the Toon that we find out is Judge Doom, played wonderfully by Christopher Lloyd, who was everywhere in the '80s and '90s.

Jessica Rabbit never really did anything for me because Femme Fatales never have, and that's pretty much Jessica's role for most of the movie, until she explains everything to Eddie when they're in Toontown. Plus I was pretty young when I first saw the movie, and even when I watched it as a hormonal teenager, she didn't do anything for me. Fictional versus reality I guess. Lol.]

Judge Doom is weird. He's a Toon, from Toontown, but he wants to destroy Toontown in order to build a freeway? Why destroy his home when he could've ruled it as iron-fisted as he rules the Toons working in the live action world? That makes no real sense to me. But it works so we don't have to delve into his backstory too much. It's still an odd and interesting play for a late '80s villain character.

On the Blu-ray all three Roger Rabbit cartoons, that were produced alongside other movies, like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, are included in the bonus features, so I watched the first one, Tummy Trouble after I watched the movie. This is actually the only one I've seen because it was included on the original VHS release of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids which we had at my grandparents's house. And, despite it being set in a hospital, I loved it. Jessica Rabbit as a nurse, Roger being mistaken for Baby Herman and taken to be prepped for surgery to get a rattle out of him, which he had swallowed after Baby Herman had spit it up, and Baby Herman causing chaos for Roger. It made me laugh. And seeing it again for the first time in about fifteen years brought back so many nostalgic memories of watching Honey, I Shrunk the Kids on VHS at my grandparents's place.

Overall it was amazing getting to watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit again after all these years. It was on my list to watch and review this year and I had planned on watching it on Disney+ since I didn't own a physical copy anymore. But I got the DVD/Blu-ray combo set, which is in the standard DVD case, instead of the Blu-ray/DVD combo set, which is in the standard Blu-ray case (Disney was weird in the 2010s), for my birthday and that's how I ended up watching it last night. It's a great movie and if, by any chance you live under a rock and haven't seen it before, I highly recommend you do so, because it's amazing!

Alrighty that's gonna be it for me for today, but I will be back soon with more great content here in the Geek Cave. So until then have a wonderful night and I will talk to you all later. Take care my friends and please stay safe!

Movies I Saw in Theatres Part 1: 1990-1999

 Hey everyone! How're you all doing today? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm talking about movies that I saw in theatres. I've decided to split this into three parts. This week will be part 1 which will cover all the movies I remember seeing in theatres from 1990 to 1999. Then, next week, I'll be covering the movies I got to see in theatres from 2000 to 2009. And then in two weeks I'll cover the movies I saw in theatres from 2010 to 2019. So, let's get into it!

The first movie I ever saw in theatres was the 1990 re-release of Disney's 1967 animated classic, The Jungle Book. I don't remember who took me or what theatre I went to but I do remember Shere Khan attacking Baloo and then I remember seeing him run away after Mowgli had tied the burning branch to his tail. I was only 3 and a half years so I don't really remember much else about that day. All I know is I was home, I was relatively healthy, and apparently able to go see a movie in theatres. I think this movie became my favourite movie of all time because of all of my subsequent viewings on VHS when I got that a year after I saw the movie in theatres.

The next movie I saw in theatres was Jurassic Park in 1993. I was in the hospital alot in 1991 and 1992 so I didn't get to go see movies in theatres in either of those years. Jurassic Park isn't a movie I actually remember very much of in theatres. However the reason I remember I even saw it is because we went to the Drive-In and it was the first movie all five of us went to see together as a family. My sister was only 3 and a half and my brother was almost 2 and a half. Like I said, I don't remember very much about actually seeing it back then because I didn't see it again for 25 years when I got the DVD and then downgraded to the VHS, because Jurassic Park is one of those classic '90s movies that you have to own on VHS if you have a VHS collection.

The following summer, which was the summer of 1994, my mom took my brother, sister, and I to go see the latest Disney animated movie, The Lion King. The theatre at South Keys didn't exist yet so we were still having to go to Cineplex Cinemas Ottawa on Carling Avenue if we wanted to go see movies. Which was a bit of a drive for us since we lived out in the middle of nowhere at that point. This was a transitional summer for me as I was leaving the school at the Ottawa Children's Treatment Centre (OCTC) and moving to Greely Elementary School, where I didn't know anyone. I was excited, but also a little nervous because I didn't know if I'd make any friends or not. We saw the movie, got the storybook, got some toys, and had the soundtrack on CD at my grandparents's place. And when I started at my new school that fall, my classmates had Lion King backpacks, and stuffed animals, so I knew I was in good company.

In January 1995 my dad took me to see the first live action movie of The Jungle Book that Disney made, 22 years before the 2016 version. I don't remember anything about the movie or why my dad had tickets for him and I to go see it, or even what theatre we went to. I just remember heading in, seeing that Star Trek Generations and asking my dad if we could see that instead, because it was Star Trek and I had the poster for it on the wall at home so I knew that Kirk AND Picard were both in it. I didn't get to see Generations theatres.

Later that year my family went to see Toy Story. My grandparents took us and it was me, my brother, my sister, and both of my parents who went. And it was glorious. Again, I don't remember exactly what theatre we went to, but, again, South Keys wouldn't exist for like another year or two at this point, so we were still going to the West End to go to the movies. We had a couple of toys from the movie. My brother had a Buzz Lightyear, as did at least one of my classmates at the time, and I had a smaller Hamm the Piggy Bank figure. Eventually we got the movie on VHS and I now have it on VHS and DVD.

A few months after we saw Toy Story my grandparents took my siblings and I to see Muppet Treasure Island, the only Muppets movie that we saw in theatres. We saw the others on TV or on VHS. Same theatre as the previous three movies. Of course I absolutely love the Muppets so getting to see them on the big screen was pretty great especially for a 9 year old. It's also the only movie that I saw in theatres in 1996. That I can recall anyway. That's the thing about childhoods, sometimes memories get mixed up, or you think you saw a movie in theatres when you actually saw it on VHS, so I'm about 99% positive that Muppet Treasure Island was the only movie that I saw in theatres in 1996. 

I didn't see any movies in theatres in 1997. However I did see a movie that came out in 1997 in theatres in 1998. That movie was Titanic (as you can see from the movie poster above). In 1998 I was part of a social group for teenagers with disabilities called Teens First and the outing we had near the end of the group's time together was go see a movie. That movie ended up being Titanic because the girls wanted to see Spice World, which had just come out and there weren't really any movies that appealed to any of us that had a showtime during the period where we'd be having our meeting, so we compromised and saw Titanic. I watched it again on VHS a few years later, but I haven't seen it in about 20 years.

My memories are a bit fuzzy when it comes to seeing Mulan in theatres. I know I saw it with my class at the time, but I don't remember why we even saw it. I remember we read the English translation of the original Chinese ballad way back in like February or March of 1998, but Mulan didn't come out until June 1998, only a week before the school year ended, but I vaguely remember the teacher saying they would still try to take us to see the movie since we'd read the ballad already and the movie wasn't coming out until the end of the school year. So I think that's who I saw it with, rather than my family.

A Bug's Life is another movie I'm a little fuzzy on because it came out late in 1998 and I'm pretty sure we didn't see it until early 1999. I remember the animated short Geri's Game as much as I remember A Bug's Life itself. The part I don't remember is who took my siblings and I to go see it. I don't remember if it was my grandparents or my parents, or all four of them.

The big film that I saw in theatres in 1999 was of course Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. I saw it twice actually. The first time was with my mentor in the Teens First Mentorship program. We went on a Saturday, probably a week or two after it came out. And then the Friday after that my nurse took me and her son to see it after school. Which was awesome. This was also the first Star Wars movie that I saw in theatres since I missed the 1997 Special Edition theatrical re-releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi and the previous theatrical releases were infrequent enough that I didn't get to see the movies until my dad got the VHS box set for Christmas in 1995.

The final movie I saw in theatres in 1999 was Inspector Gadget. I was supposed to see it with my mentor, but ended up seeing it with my dad and my sister because my mentor didn't show up. I enjoyed it even though it was definitely a bit more...involved than the original cartoon was when it came to the characters. Or tried to be afterall. I mean the most involved they got with Dr. Claw was showing his face. That was a mistake on the part of the filmmakers but it was the '90s this kind of movie wasn't quite the norm yet. It was just an interesting choice.

Alright folks, I think I'll cut it off there for this week. I'll be back next time with the movies I got to see in theatres from 2000 to 2009. There are some interesting movies in the bunch next time, with a bit more variety than just some of the major movies to come out of the '90s. So until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.