Star Trek: The Next Generation #2 (1988) Christmas Comic Book Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back for another comic book review. Today's comic is going to be Star Trek: The Next Generation #2 from 1988, the only Star Trek comic to be Christmas themed. So without further ado, let's see how Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D deals with the Grinches, and no, that's not a joke. Let's get into it, with Spoilers!

Following the events of issue #1, the Enterprise-D is enroute to Starbase 33 for maintenance when they're waylaid by a ship crewed by an unknown race of beings. At the same time the crew is celebrating Christmas with Picard, Troi, Yar, the Crushers, the Bickleys (I'll get to them later), and La Forge joining in on the celebrations while Riker and Worf remain on the Bridge to handle things with the new race they just encountered. But things take a turn for the worst when a strange phenomenon is discovered aboard the Federation flagship and reveals just who the crew's new alien friends truly are.

Wow, I actually did a summary of the issue. Lol. As I mentioned in part 4 of my DC Comics's Star Trek Overview, the first six issue mini-series published for TNG in 1988 is the weirdest series of them all. Mainly because Mike Carlin, who was the writer on all six issues of the mini-series, did stuff that no other Star Trek comic would ever do, akin to what Gold Key Comics did with their TOS series in the '60s. Though I don't think the Gold Key TOS comics ever had the crew of the Enterprise meet a race of Grinches at Christmastime. They would definitely have a couple like the Bickleys in the series though.

Wesley Crusher is actually annoying in this comic book series, though he isn't AS annoying in this issue. As I mentioned in my series overview, these issues were written several months before the TV show even aired and all Carlin had to go on was the scripts for the first five or six episodes. Because of this the characters, while they look like their TV show counterparts, they don't act like them. That includes Data, who acts more like a child or someone who doesn't fit in with their peers. And that just makes Wesley more unbearable than the way Wil Wheaton portrayed the character after "Encounter at Farpoint" and "The Naked Now", which are the only two episodes where Wesley is annoying in the show. 

The artwork is decent, though I'm not sure about the crew's off-duty outfits. Troi's dress is the only one that makes sense. Picard's jacket doesn't and neither do Beverly Crusher's, Yar's, or Data's. Wesley and La Forge's still feel like how many creators portrayed futuristic clothing to be at the time this issue was published. It actually reminds me of Kryptonian clothing shown in the Superman comics from the '50s, right up to when John Byrne revamped Krypton and the Kryptonians in Superman: The Man of Steel #1 in 1986, only a year before this issue was published. 

I also find it interesting that the issue is titled "Spirit in the Sky!". I don't know if Carlin, or series editor Robert Greenberger, named it after the 1969/1970 Norman Greenbaum song, "Spirit in the Sky". Mostly because Carlin doesn't even mention in his 2007 interview with Star Trek Magazine whether it was him or Greenberger who came up with the names for the issues. It's also something that I don't know if other comic book writers have talked about either. Like is it the writers who comes up with the titles for the issues, or is it up to Editorial to come up with them?

Overall this is an okay issue. These early TNG comic book issues are pretty weird and aren't the greatest. It's not the fault of Carlin, the artists or the editor. They were rushed into production and all they had to go on was production stills, which is why Picard and the rest of the main characters still look the way they would on the TV show, and scripts for the early episodes of the first season since "Encounter at Farpoint" hadn't even aired yet when Carlin began writing the comics. With Eaglemoss having gone under I don't know how easy it's going to be to get this issue. I was lucky because I was able to get the trade paperback collection of the mini-series, Star Trek: The Next Generation: Beginnings, that DC published in 1996, but it's not in print anymore, and I think even IDW's reprint of the trade is out of print now since it was published in 2013. But you might find this issue or either of the trade paperback collections of the whole series at conventions.

That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for my review of the first two episodes of Willow, a Disney+ series that serves as a sequel/follow-up to the 1988 Ron Howard film of the same name, starring Warwick Davis as the titular character. So until then have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Barney & The Backyard Gang: Waiting for Santa (1990) Christmas Special Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. My birthday is this weekend so I'm looking forward to that, and it's a little less than four weeks until Christmas. Which means it's time for Christmas themed reviews, which I started last week with my review for The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. I'm gonna have comic book reviews that are Christmas themed, more than I did last year, and I'll have one Christmas movie review up closer to the day. Today though I'm going to review Barney & The Backyard Gang: Waiting for Santa which was released on VHS on May 11th, 1990, so nowhere near Christmastime. It's also the best-selling Barney tape ever, probably because it was the only Barney Christmas special until Barney's Night Before Christmas was released in 1999. There isn't a whole lot to talk about so there will be spoilers in case you didn't grow up with this tape. Let's get into it!

 While The Backyard Show (1988), Three Wishes (1988), and A Day at the Beach (1989) sold relatively well the original releases of the tapes, and their earliest re-releases most likely, were mainly sold in Texas, where the show was in production. And with Barney & The Backyard Gang actually being a separate license from the one for Barney & Friends and other Barney releases, unless you grew up with these tapes, you might not even be aware that this set of eight VHS tapes even exists. Waiting for Santa was the first tape to be released knowing that there was an audience for Barney outside of Texas. It's also the first tape where Barney is a magenta colour rather than the darker purple that he was in the first three tapes of the series. 

Barney and the kids, Amy, Luci, Tina, Adam, and Michael are asked by Santa to help the new kid at Tina's school, Derek, by taking him to the North Pole so that Mrs. Claus can show him that Santa knows that Derek has moved recently. While there the kids meet a snowman, who could've been Frosty had the Lyons Group, the company who owned Barney at the time, had the license to that character, and they pretend to be Elves and sing and dance, while Mrs. Claus and Barney remind them of what Christmas is all about. Then they all go home and Barney, Michael, and Amy fall asleep on the couch, while Barney reads The Night Before Christmas to the kids and Santa shows up. As you can see, not much happens in it.

As mentioned Waiting for Santa was a first for alot of things that would appear later on in Barney & Friends. It was the introduction of Derek, the first time Barney is a magenta colour, though the costume doesn't quite match up with how the character looks in Barney & Friends or on the cover of the 1993 to 1998 re-releases of Waiting for Santa (as you can see above), it's also the first time that the show doesn't revolve around the kids playing in Amy and Michael's backyard prior to Barney coming to life/appearing, the first time Barney does his "Barney Shake" trick, though he only uses it two more times, both in the The Backyard Gang series, and the first time Sandy Duncan doesn't appear as Amy and Michael's mom as she was a big part of the reason the first three tapes got made since she was a pretty big TV star at the time and had voiced Todd's girlfriend in The Fox and the Hound (1981). 

Rewatching it last night for this review, I noticed that, aside from shots of Barney's flying sleigh from the front as the gang are heading to and from the North Pole, which had clearly been shot in front of a green screen, this tape is the one that has the highest production quality to it though I don't think the budget was increased for it, given that it was a low budget, independent, production. Aside from Barney in Concert (1991) and Rock with Barney (1991), you know that the kids and Barney are on a soundstage somewhere because the sets look like they were produced for a stage production rather than a TV show or movie and that the backgrounds are backdrops. Particularly during outdoor scenes (and that goes all the way through the first six seasons of Barney & Friends too). But here, except maybe for the outdoor scenes at the North Pole, it doesn't feel like it was filmed on a soundstage, and I think that's because alot more happens on interior sets, like Amy and Michael's living room, Derek's bedroom, and Santa's Workshop than on exterior sets. I mean even Amy and Michael's garage in The Backyard Show looks like it was built for a stage production rather than for a movie or TV show. 

This is also the first episode in the series, where the five remaining kids from the previous three tapes, Michael, Amy, Adam, Luci, and Tina are all starting to look and sound older in comparison to how they were in the first three tapes, which is interesting considering this tape, along with the next one, Barney's Campfire Sing-Along, was produced in November of 1989.

I actually wanted to talk about the production date for a moment. A long time ago, when I did my Disney Sing-Along Songs: Disneyland Fun (1990) review, I stated that there was probably six months to a year before the tape's release date that the show was filmed. So everything filmed for Disneyland Fun was probably taped in either late 1989 or early 1990 as that tape's release date was August 14th, 1990. The production date for Waiting for Santa confirms this in a strange way as it was produced in November, 1989 and was released in May, 1990. So that kinda gives me a good idea of the turnaround between the filming of Disneyland Fun and it's release on VHS. Which is why I wanted to bring it up in this review. 

The acting is decent for a show made for kids. One of the reasons my siblings and I loved the Backyard Gang tapes and the first two seasons of Barney & Friends is because of the kid characters. They were all pretty relatable, even though they were actually older than any of us were at the time. In this episode though, Derek was the most relatable because we moved several times between 1991 and 1997 and each time I was concerned that Santa wouldn't be able to find us because we'd moved. And of course Barney, played by David Voss and voiced by Bob West, is fantastic as well. This is the in between stage version of Barney where he isn't the original Barney & The Backyard Gang Barney with the dark purple colouring and the much deeper voice, nor is he the Barney & Friends Barney with the more iconic voice. He's like a mix of the two, with a slightly deeper voice, but with the magenta colouring for the suit. 

The songs on this tape are pretty good too. Only four of them would appear in episodes of Barney & Friends or other Barney Home Video releases right into the 2010s. Those songs are "Jingle Bells", "Winter's Wonderful", "Skating, Skating", and "Jolly Old St. Nicholas". The rest of the songs sung in this episode are only used in this episode and then were never used again.

Waiting for Santa is actually the last Backyard Gang tape that my siblings and I got when we were kids. I think we got it for Christmas in either 1993 or 1994 from the grandparents as I know it was the 1993 re-release (the cover is shown above) rather than a later re-release, I just don't remember when we got it exactly. It was way after we'd gotten the 1992 re-releases of The Backyard Show and Rock with Barney, the only other Barney & The Backyard Gang tapes that we owned, though we rented and borrowed all but one of the remaining five tapes in the series. But I think I'll do a separate VHS Corner post about Barney & The Backyard Gang as a whole, and the various VHS releases the series had the late '80s and throughout the '90s.

Overall this is a great Christmas special for little kids, and for those who grew up with Barney, whether you watched the Backyard Gang tapes as they were coming out, discovered Barney with season 1 of Barney & Friends, watched the final two seasons of Barney & Friends in 2009 and 2010, or only know the character through the Barney Home Video DVD releases that came out in the 2010s, after the TV series ended in 2010. Because Lyrick Studios let the license for Barney & The Backyard Gang go in 1997, and only Waiting for Santa and Barney in Concert would get re-released after that, Waiting for Santa in 1998 and Barney in Concert in 2001, kids who watched Barney in the 2000s and the 2010s wouldn't know about The Backyard Gang especially once Barney videos stopped being released on VHS in 2006 as none of the Backyard Gang videos ever got released on DVD. I'll get into that more when I talk about Barney & The Backyard Gang as a whole in a VHS Corner post sometime in the near future. 

Waiting for Santa is on YouTube if you have kids who might like to watch an early version of Barney, or if you loved Barney growing up and either would like to revisit this early episode, or see what Barney was like when he first started if you're someone who is younger and grew up with Barney after 2001. I recommend it as a fun Christmas special.

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for today. I will be back tomorrow for a comic book review. Not quite sure which comic yet, but it'll be a Christmas related issue for sure. I don't have a ton of those, so we'll see. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.     

The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022) TV Review

 Hey everyone! How're you all doing today? I'm hanging in there. I got some news about a good friend of mine a few hours ago. He had a stroke this afternoon and is in the hospital. A friend of his let me know, and will keep me updated as he finds out more. In the meantime I'm here to review The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, which just came out on Disney+. There won't be any spoilers in this review, so if you haven't seen it yet, you can still read this. Let's get into it.

When Guardians of the Galaxy first came out back in 2014 I didn't believe that it could work as a live action movie set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe which had only blown up in popularity two years earlier with the release of the first Avengers movie. Comic book fans, at least those who were aware of the Guardians of the Galaxy, felt that the movie was a huge risk since these characters weren't widely known, even in the comic book community, and it being a purely Science Fiction film at a time where that genre wasn't doing great, and even Star Wars had just popped back into mainstream culture with the hype of the then upcoming Sequel Trilogy and accompanying one-off A Star Wars Story films. But it worked, and I loved it when I saw it in theatres. And while I wasn't as happy with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) when I finally got the chance to watch it, when The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special was announced back in 2020 I was excited. Especially because the possibility of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 had only just been confirmed after James Gunn had been fired by Disney only a year or two before.

It was fun. Basically Mantis (played by Pom Klementieff) and Drax (played by Dave Bautista) decide to save Christmas for Peter Quill (played by Chris Pratt) after hearing Kraglin (played by Sean Gunn) tell the story of how Yondu (played by Michael Rooker) shot down Christmas when Quill was a kid, not long after the Ravagers had taken him from Earth, as we saw in the opening of the first movie. To do so they go to Earth to kidnap Kevin Bacon and bring him to Knowhere as a present for Quill.

Groot (Vin Diesel), Nebula (Karen Gillan), and Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) all appear in this special though their rolls are very minimal here in comparison to the previous two movies, and Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and Avengers: Endgame (2019). Which is fine because it's a 44 minute special rather than a two to three hour movie, but I do have a question about Groot. Why does he look like a guy in a suit rather than the CGI being that he's been throughout the rest of the MCU? Rocket and Cosmo the Space Dog are both CGI, but Groot isn't, unless they redesigned him for this special to make him look like he was a guy in a suit. 

I found Drax to be more annoying in this special than he was in the second movie though I did love the way Bautista portrayed that. It's just the character is annoying now that his revenge plot against Thanos is over since Thanos was killed in Endgame. And yes, that was a spoiler for Avengers: Endgame, but it's been almost four years since that movie came out, so if you haven't seen it yet, it's your decision. Bautista still does a great job playing him though.

I was really glad to see Mantis get the spotlight in this special since she really hasn't had a whole lot to do in the last three movies she was in. I'm not familiar with the character from the comic, but I found the character lacking in the second Guardians of the Galaxy movie and the two Avengers movies she was in. So I'm happy that she had more to do here because I thought she was cool but without a whole lot to do in her previous appearances.

Overall this was a fun special. I've heard some people say that this felt like the signal to end the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, but honestly, I thought it did a great job of setting the characters up for the third movie. Better than Endgame did anyway. If you're looking for a fun Holiday special to watch, I definitely recommend this one. Even if you aren't generally a fan of James Gunn's work. 

That's it for me for today folks. I'll be back soon with another review. Until then I will talk to you all later. Take care my friends.  

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Saturday Morning Adventures #1 (2022) Comic Book Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Thursday. Today I'm here to review a comic that I got during my last outing with Brad, but it's not Thunderbolts #2. It's another issue #1, this time from IDW Publishing. It's the first issue of a series that I didn't even realize had come out until I saw it on the month old rack for IDW comics at my local comic book store. It's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Saturday Morning Adventures #1. There won't be too many spoilers but there will be some, so if you haven't read the issue and are planning on doing so, please read it first and then read this review. With that out of the way, let's get into it.

When I was a kid there was a comic book series that was loosely based on the 1987 Ninja Turtles cartoon published by Archie Comics called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures, which is one of my favourite comic book series of all time, though it did diverge from the cartoon after the first nine or ten issues. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Saturday Morning Adventures feels like a spiritual successor to the original Archie Comics run from the late '80s and early to mid '90s. I say spiritual successor because this issue seems to stick closer to the character and set designs from the cartoon rather than the designs used in the Archie Comics series. Particularly for the Turtles, Splinter, and April. The villains weren't altered any from their cartoon counterparts. 

In this issue there's heavy rain in New York City, preventing the Turtles from going out on patrol. Which is very strange to me because I'm pretty sure the Turtles have been out in the rain in the cartoon this comic is based on, so why they couldn't go out even though there was heavy wind and lightning as well as the rain, but, that's the conceit of this issue so I'm going with it. As a tool to help them with their training, Donatello has created a VR video game that, naturally, goes haywire during a power surge, so the Turtles are stuck in the game until one of them wins it. I won't say which Turtle wins the game, but it's not Raphael. 

While I was reading this issue, both times, I imagined I could hear the voice cast for the Turtles, Splinter, Shredder (he's in the VR simulator), and April (she appears at the very end) because that's how close to their cartoon versions these characters look. It's also the tone of the book too. I mean this could literally be an episode of the 1987 cartoon from season 2 or season 3 without it being an actual adaptation of an episode of the series. Which is pretty good.

Erik Burnham is the writer of this issue and Tim Lattie is the artist. I'm not familiar with either of their work, but they did a really good job at capturing the essence of what the 1987 cartoon was. Though I am a little confused about something. Did they update the series to be set in modern day or is it still set in the '80s and/or '90s? The reason I'm asking is because Donatello built a VR system and mentioned that it's more advanced than other VR systems out there, but the TV set they have is the same one they have on the show, the VR set itself looks like a really big computer station or arcade cabinet, and the video game box that we see at the end of the issue looks like a game released for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. It doesn't really matter because the ridiculousness of the original cartoon works no matter what decade the comic book is set in, I was just curious because all Wikipedia says is that it's a four issue mini-series by Burnham and Lattie and that's it. 

I really enjoyed this issue as it brought back the feeling I have reading the original Archie Comics series from the '90s. And of course it reminds me of how much fun I had watching the 1987 cartoon when I was a kid. It's cheesy, it's stupid, it's fun and I loved it. If you're a fan of the 1987 cartoon or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures I recommend picking this issue up as well as issue #2, as it's also out by now.

That's gonna be it for me for today folks. I'll be back soon for another review. Also, I left Twitter recently and my last post didn't do very well, only getting three views in the last 24 to 48 hours, so if you could share this review with others I would very much appreciate it. Particularly because the higher views does give me the incentive to continue with my Power Rangers review series as well as posts like my overview on the DC Comics Star Trek comic book series and as much as I love doing those kinds of blog posts, they do take quite a bit of time to do and if nobody's reading them then there's no point in me doing those kinds of posts anymore. Thanks. Anyways, that's it for today. Have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Was Animorphs Influenced by the Success of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers?

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I have another off the wall kind of post for you today. I'm going to be talking about whether or not Animorphs was influenced by the success of the Power Rangers (1993-Present) franchise, specifically Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (1993-1995). So let's get into it.

Power Rangers and Animorphs are two of my favourite media franchises of all time. Both came out in the late '90s to early 2000s and both were hugely successful for their respective mediums. However the popularity of them never reached what the MCU accomplished in 2012 following the release of The Avengers. Today, while both franchises are still popular with their respective fanbases, mainstream pop culture has left them behind. But, did Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and its success have anything to do with the creation of Animorphs only three years later? First, let's take a look at each series and see what they have in common with each other.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was a TV series created by Haim Saban and Shuki Levy that ran on Fox Kids in the United States, and on YTV and Global TV in Canada, from August 28th, 1993 to November 27th, 1995 that blew up into this multimedia, multi-season, franchise about five teenagers who get the ability to change their form from a friendly alien in order to save the world from not so friendly aliens, with multiple members joining the team later on. The franchise also had...

...a book series...

...a comic book series...

...a movie...

...a toyline...

...episodes on VHS, and...

...video games.

Animorphs is a book series created by Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant, which was published by Scholastic from June 1996 to May 2001. It's about five teenagers who are given super powers by a friendly alien in order to save the world from not so friendly aliens, with multiple members joining the team later on. This franchise has...

...a TV series that aired on Nickelodeon in the United States and on both YTV and Global here in Canada...

...a comic book series...

...a movie (it's in the works)...

...a toyline...

...episodes on VHS, and...

...video games. Sound familiar? Because those are the only similarities between the two franchises, aside from both being staples of the '90s and early 2000s. While Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and Power Rangers as a whole, is a straight up superhero series, Animorphs is not. Animorphs is a teen/war drama series that gets extremely dark with varying shades of gray rather than the straight up good vs. evil that Power Rangers does. 

I am highly doubtful that Animorphs was influenced by Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in any way simply because Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant's first child, Jake, wasn't born yet when they started developing Animorphs in 1995. And while Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was at the height of it's popularity in early 1995, it was still vastly popular with children, not with adults, and both Katherine and Michael were entering their 40s when Animorphs was in development. It's possible that Scholastic may have been looking for a book series that fills the spot that MMPR was filling on television, but that's not what they got from Katherine and Michael. In fact they got an amazing Sci-Fi series that they found difficult to market. Which makes sense because Animorphs is not your typical Scholastic published children's book series.

Now the only way I could see Power Rangers influencing Animorphs at all is in the live action TV series that aired on Nickelodeon, Global TV, and YTV from 1998-2000. The TV show, which had a smaller budget than Power Rangers has ever had, removed much of the darker elements of the books, including the morally gray aspects of the characters. In the TV show, the characters are very black and white. Visser Three and the Yeerks are the bad guys, the Animorphs and the Andalites are the good guys. And Visser Three is more like Rita and Zedd in the TV show version too. And while I can see Nickelodeon wanting a piece of the Power Rangers pie, the TV version of Animorphs was in development in 1997, during Power Rangers Turbo and at a time where Power Rangers was under threat of cancellation due to ratings being so low. Plus, as we saw in my last Power Rangers review, Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie (1997) was a box office failure, so I doubt that Nickelodeon was looking for a show that was like Power Rangers whenever they chose to produce the Animorphs TV show.

Also, by the time Animorphs premiered on September 4th 1998 in the U.S. and September 15th here in Canada, Power Rangers In Space wasn't even halfway through it's original run yet, so I don't think the decision to renew the series for a seventh season had been made by Fox Kids yet. Despite Power Rangers and Animorphs sharing certain elements, such as both being about teenagers using super powers to save the world from an alien invasion force, and the way both had books, TV shows, comics, toys, home video releases, and video games, the authors of Animorphs didn't have Power Rangers in mind when they created the series, and Power Rangers wasn't popular enough for it to have the influence it once had by the time the Animorphs TV show was in production.

That's all I have to say about that. It's something that's been on my mind for the last couple of days as Power Rangers has been on my mind between me having watched up to the first five episodes of Turbo over the last couple of months, and the passing of Jason David Frank over the weekend. And Animorphs has been on my mind lately too. So naturally, I came up with this blog post. 

That's it for me for today but I'll probably be back tomorrow for a comic book review. Maybe issue #2 of Thunderbolts, maybe something else. We'll see. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care my friends.

DVDs At Their Peak in the 2000s

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm just gonna do a quick little post on DVDs and how they were at the height of their popularity in the 2000s, before the introduction of Blu-rays. I'll be looking at three studios that did so much with the format, as well as the franchises that got the most out of DVDs during the 2000s. So let's get into it.

The 2000s. I was in high school from 2001 until 2006, the internet was starting to become even more prominent than it had been in the '90s, and studios had started putting their movies out on DVD rather than on VHS. While DVDs had been around since 1996 in Japan and 1997 in North America, it wasn't until the early 2000s that movie studios began doing something with the format beyond just slapping the movie onto it and it's trailer as a bonus feature. And even though VHS was still around in the 2000s, the format was basically dead by the time studios discontinued using them in 2006. Most studios anyway. Disney kept putting movies out on VHS through 2007 though they were exclusives to the Disney Movie Club and not released to retail stores. I'll be looking at Batman and Superman for Warner Bros., Star Wars for Fox, Star Trek, the movies and TV shows, for Paramount, and the Walt Disney Platinum Editions, as well as the two-disc special editions Disney put out for certain movies in the mid-2000s.

We started renting and buying DVDs in 2003 at the earliest, because I remember renting Star Trek Nemesis on DVD before I ever got it on VHS. We also had a bunch of Disney movies on DVD, like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Lilo & Stitch, the Herbie the Love Bug movies, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles. I personally wouldn't get a DVD player until about 2005 or 2006, when I got a portable DVD player. Since we're already on the topic of Disney, let's talk about Disney first.

While Disney had been releasing movies on DVD since 1998, when they released Mary Poppins on the format, and had only been releasing the animated movies on DVD since late 1999, it wasn't until 2001 when they began releasing two-disc editions with the Walt Disney Platinum Editions, beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Even outside of that movies like Alice in Wonderland and Mulan got 2-disc special editions in 2004, as did some of their then most recent films such as The Emperor's New Groove and Atlantis: The Lost Empire. On the TV side of things things weren't great. Disney was wildly inconsistent with releasing TV shows on DVD. Some shows never got complete seasons only three or four volumes, while others got a season and a half and then didn't get finished until the 2010s. There were some shows that didn't get DVD releases at all. Regardless, TV shows produced by Disney didn't get anywhere near the amount of bonus features that the 2-disc DVD releases of the movies had. I have most of the Walt Disney Platinum Edition line, and am only missing four releases. I don't have the 2-disc DVD releases that Disney put out of some of the animated movies.

Warner Bros. on the other hand, did so much with their catalogue on DVD. They released complete season boxsets for even their older TV shows like Adventures of Superman, Wonder Woman, and The Dukes of Hazzard, as well as newer shows like Smallville, The O.C., and One Tree Hill. Their animated series library on DVD was extensive too with the entire DC Animated Universe getting released throughout the 2000s. Including the movies like Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. In terms of the movies, they would release giant boxsets of their more popular titles such as Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology: 1989-1997  which contains Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, and Batman & Robin, and Superman: The Ultimate Collection which contained all four movies in the Christopher Reeve Superman series, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, and Superman Returns, with each movie having multiple discs, and both sets having a continuing documentary that chronicles the production of each movie from development to release. The four Batman movies were released individually, while the each of the movies in the Superman set were released individually but without the documentary. I don't have the Superman set but I do have the Blu-ray version of the Batman set and all of the bonus features are the same on both. In fact, even to this day Warner Bros. still releases 2-disc DVD editions of their movies even though Blu-ray and 4K have essentially replaced DVD as the primary home media format.

While Paramount didn't do this with all of it's TV shows and movies, Star Trek was an example of the movies getting the 2-disc special edition treatment and the TV shows getting individual season boxsets as well as a complete series set. TOS and the movies were the only ones to have DVD releases prior to 2002, and TOS had a forty volume DVD set similar to the old Star Trek: The Collector's Edition VHS line from Columbia Home Video Library. All ten movies got the 2-disc treatment starting with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which never had a single disc release in the '90s the way the other movies did. All the sets had tons of bonus features. I've had all ten of the 2-disc edition releases of the movies, and I have all but two of the seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation on DVD, only missing seasons 6 and 7. I also have the first season of Deep Space Nine and the first two seasons of Voyager and they're all pretty cool sets. I don't have the original season sets for TOS though, but I do have a more recent DVD boxset for season 1 which is the late 2000s Remastered version of the season, rather than the original.

Star Wars was weird because while the TV shows (all two of them) and the TV movies (all two of them) had DVD releases, they were never complete season runs and didn't have any bonus features. Also George Lucas hadn't intended on releasing any of the movies on DVD until the Prequel Trilogy was completed in 2005. Which is why when Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace on home video in 2000, it had only a VHS release. And even when the movie had a DVD release in 2001 and then Episode II had a VHS and DVD release in late 2002, George insisted that the Original Trilogy would not be released on DVD until 2006 at the latest since Episode III was coming out in 2005, wrapping up the Prequel Trilogy. But then in 2004 the Original Trilogy was released on DVD in a giant boxset which included all three movies (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi) as well as a bonus disc full of special features including the 2 hour documentary Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy. I love the DVD boxset for the Original Trilogy because the bonus features are amazing as are those on the DVDs for the Prequel Trilogy.

There are so many other examples of amazing DVD releases but these are the ones I wanted to focus on because all of these came out between 2001 and 2006, during the height of DVD's lifespan as, once Blu-ray was introduced in 2006, DVDs started getting less and less bonus features to the point where by 2014 Disney had next to none bonus features on their DVD releases, saving the majority of them, including recycled DVD bonus features, for their Blu-ray releases.

Anyways folks that's gonna be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more reviews and posts. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you later. Take care. 

Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi (2022) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Last night I watched the animated mini-series, Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi on Disney+ and I'm gonna review it today. There will be some spoilers simply because there are story points and character stuff that I need to talk about, so if you haven't watched the series yet, and plan on doing so, please be aware that there WILL be spoilers in this review. Also, before I get into the review, I did start to watch Power Rangers Turbo on Monday night, but the first five episodes were rough to get through, so I'm taking a break from Power Rangers until the New Year so I can focus on other reviews, such as this one, and so I can watch some other shows like Andor (2022-) and season 1 of Stargirl (2020-2023). And yes, some more comic book reviews will be thrown into the mix as well. So without further ado, let's get into Tales of the Jedi!

Tales of the Jedi is a six episode anthology mini-series produced by Lucasfilm Animation and created by Dave Filoni, who also created Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008-2020), Star Wars Rebels (2014-2018), and The Bad Batch (2021-). Like those shows it's an animated series, and it focuses on two key characters from the movies and the other shows, Count Dooku and Ahsoka Tano, who was created by Filoni back in 2008 to be Anakin's Padawan in The Clone Wars. Ahsoka's stories happen in episodes 1, 5, and 6, and Dooku's take place in episodes 2, 3, and 4. And I have to be honest, I enjoyed the Dooku episodes more than I did the Ahsoka episodes. Simply because there's so much with Ahsoka right now since she's been on The Mandalorian (2019-), and The Book of Boba Fett (2022), as well as her own series, Ahsoka, which is set to debut sometime in 2023. And because I haven't seen The Clone Wars past the second season and I haven't seen Rebels beyond the first season, the character just doesn't interest me as much as she might've had I seen both shows all the way through. Plus, there was so much about Dooku that we didn't get in Attack of the Clones when that came out twenty years ago, and even at the time the novels being published around the release of Episode II didn't delve too much into Dooku's past.

I know there's an audiobook called Dooku: Jedi Lost that gives details on his past, as well as his time as Yoda's apprentice, but it doesn't show Dooku's final turn to the Dark Side, or instances where his faith in the Jedi Order and the Republic are shaken. Which is where his three episodes come in. I also appreciate that it actually shows the corruption in the Senate as well as in the Jedi Council with characters like Mace Windu, the senator of the planet that Dooku goes to in Episode 2 with his Padawan, Qui-Gon Jinn, and the senator of Raxus Secundus, the planet he goes to with Mace Windu in Episode 3. Throughout the Prequel Trilogy we'd heard about how corrupt the Republic was, but, aside from Palpatine and his minions, we never got to see it on a smaller planetary level. Even in the Expanded Universe/Legends novels coming out in the 2000s.

The Ahsoka episodes are fine. I don't hate them. I just found the Dooku episodes to have something more to them. The Ahsoka episodes feel like a combination of material that couldn't be used in The Clone Wars and Rebels, and stuff Filoni's setting up for Ahsoka. Which is fine, I mean Lucasfilm has been trying to make Star Wars a much more cohesive franchise since The New Jedi Order started publication back in 1999, especially because the prequels were coming out around that time. So I'm okay with Star Wars being more interconnected than it was before.

I was talking to a friend of mine last night after I finished the show, and he was telling me how Ahsoka feels like the Batman of the Star Wars Universe these days. I'm not sure I would go that far, but I do agree that Lucasfilm is marketing her much harder than they did back when the character first appeared in The Clone Wars back in 2008. 

My favourite episode was episode 4, "The Sith Lord". It takes place during the end of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), and not only was it a good companion to the end of the movie, but it was a great progression from episodes 2 and 3. In the previous two episodes we'd seen Dooku go through things that really made him re-evaluate his opinion about the Jedi Order and it's role in the Republic. But the Council not taking Qui-Gon's Sith theory and then his subsequent death was the breaking point for Dooku. By the way that was basically how it was in Legends too, but this show not only made that element canon again, but it also made things a bit clearer than it had been previously. Plus the Lightsaber duel between Yaddle and Dooku was pretty great. Speaking of Yaddle, I don't know anything about the character, because, aside from being in the council chamber in The Phantom Menace, she didn't appear much in Legends, and never showed up in the movies again. So I liked that she got a little bit of a spotlight in this episode. 

I will say that one thing I appreciated about Ahsoka's episodes is that it finally filled in the blanks as to how she survived Order 66 in terms of the whole getting killed by Clone Troopers versus not getting killed by Clone Troopers thing. Because, don't forget The Clone Wars originally went off the air in 2013, only returning for a sixth season on Netflix in 2014 before Rebels started that same year. So Ahsoka shows up in Rebels without much info about how she survived Order 66. It wasn't until season 7 of The Clone Wars, which came out in 2020, that we saw Ahsoka escaping Order 66. Here, we just see her practicing a Lightsaber technique that Anakin taught her and that she practiced throughout her training with him. 

Overall this was a great series. I have no interest in the other animated Star Wars anthology series, Star Wars: Visions, but this was great. I do wish that more characters could've been the focus of the show, because if you're not a fan of either Count Dooku or Ahsoka Tano, this series isn't going to be for you. Not to mention there are plenty of Jedi from the Prequel/Clone Wars era that could be followed, so maybe it'll end up getting a second season? Doubtful, but anything is possible. I do think Ahsoka was chosen because not only did Filoni create her and he created this show, but the live action series is coming out next year so this was kind of a last opportunity to do anything with Ahsoka before that series starts coming out. And Dooku was just a very pleasant surprise. I recommend watching this show if you're a Star Wars fan and haven't seen it yet.

Alright my friends that's gonna be it for me for today. I'll be back soon, probably tomorrow, with another review. Not sure of what yet, but it'll be something. Until then have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Thunderbolts (2022) #1 Comic Book Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? Did you all have a good weekend? I had a quiet weekend. Today I'm back with a comic book review. It's not anything crazy and involved. I haven't done a simple single issue review in a while, so I thought today would be the perfect day for it. I'm also reviewing something relatively recent. As you probably saw in the title of this review, I'm taking a look at Thunderbolts #1 by Jim Zub with art by Sean Izaakse and colors by Java Tartaglia. I'm going to try and make this review as spoiler free as possible as it is a current issue that just came out at the end of August. So let's get into it.

This issue was purely an impulse buy. I was at the comic book store with my best friend, Brad, and we were just looking around, unsure of what I wanted to pick up, aside from the final issue of Power Rangers Universe being that I haven't kept up, both in buying and in knowledge of what's coming out, with current comics much, aside from a few DC titles and the Power Rangers titles that Boom! Studios has been publishing. I was looking at the month old Marvel section of the store, where books go before they become back issues. I don't know if it's because the Thunderbolts movie is coming out in about a year and a half (mid-2024) or because Brad had just been telling me about this book in the car on our way to the comic book store, but I picked up this issue along with issue #2 and She-Hulk #6. So keep an eye out for reviews of those issues in the near future. 

Thunderbolts #1 takes place following the events of the six issue mini-series, Devil's Reign and its one shot epilogue, Devil's Reign: Omega #1 where Luke Cage replaced Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. the Kingpin, as the mayor of New York City. Because the last incarnation of the Thunderbolts had consisted of villains hired by Kingpin to be the only legitimate superhero team in New York City, after he banned the Avengers and other superheroes from the city, Cage, who had led the Thunderbolts in the past, wanted to fix the name's tarnished reputation. He asks Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye, to lead the team, and uses the new team partially as a marketing stint for his tenure as mayor. 

In addition to Clint, the new Thunderbolts are America Chavez, Gutsen Glory, who is a brand new character making his debut in this issue, Persuasion/Kara Killgrave, the daughter of Jessica Jones's number one villain, Zebediah Killgrave, a.k.a. the Purple Man, and Victor Alvarez, who took Luke Cage's place as Power Man, with Monica Rambeau/Spectrum helping them out. I'm not overly familiar with any of these characters though I know Clint and Monica the most since I've seen the MCU films that Hawkeye is in, and I watched Hawkeye, and I saw some of WandaVision, which Monica is in, as well as Captain Marvel. I only know who Luke Cage is because of how much people talked about the Netflix series back when it was coming out. Of course I also know who U.S. Agent is thanks to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

The team is called to take out the former Thunderbolts team, which consisted of Electro/Francine Frye, Whiplash/Anton Vanko, Agony/the Agony Symbiote/Gemma Shin, Taskmaster/Tony Masters, and Abomination/Emil Blonsky. Of these villains, I know Whiplash from Iron Man 2 (2010), and Abomination from She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. I know he was in The Incredible Hulk (2008), but I never finished watching the movie, and it's so detached from the rest of the MCU, despite characters from the movie popping up from time to time, that I didn't even see Abomination in the movie, and completely forgot that he was even part of the MCU until it was announced that Tim Roth was reprising his role from the movie on She-Hulk. 

Anyways the mission doesn't go well. They catch the bad guys, but the new Thunderbolts also cause some major property damage, and Clint punches out U.S. Agent who was there as a representative of the F.B.I. to return the bad guys to prison. But, as usual, Walker acts like a supervillain instead of the hero he's supposed to be, hence why Clint knocks him out. Mayor Cage isn't happy, and neither is the marketing advisors he hired to head the team's public relations department.

After the mission something weird starts happening, but rather than trying to explain it here, I'll let you read the issue yourselves to find out what it is. If you've already read this issue though, you know what that thing is.

I enjoyed this issue. I wasn't lost as Zub did a good enough job at catching readers who hadn't read Devil's Reign up on what had happened before, such as myself. I also enjoyed the team dynamics in this issue. For once it wasn't full of bickering and petty infighting due to baggage from the previous incarnation of the team or full of a character's history with a member of the team. Which is nice. Though I get the feeling that Cage only asked Clint to lead the new Thunderbolts because his first pick said no. Again, I won't say who it is in case you want to read this issue, but it's not really a surprise as to who it is.

Jim Zub is not a writer I'm overly familiar with. I know he's done a few things for Marvel since 2016, one of them being the previous, pre-Devil's Reign, Thunderbolts book where Bucky was on the team as it's leader. He also did a few books for Image and some Dungeons & Dragons comic book mini-series for IDW, along with a Samurai Jack comic and a Rick and Morty vs. Dungeons & Dragons mini-series.

The only thing I didn't like about this book is that the villains's names aren't mentioned anywhere in the issue, and aren't even captioned above their first appearance in the issue so that new readers know who they are. The only reason I recognized Abomination is because he was on She-Hulk and that had just dropped it's first two episodes when this book came out, and was just finishing the season when I bought this issue a few weeks ago. I had to look up the rest of the villains on the Marvel Wiki because I had no clue who any of them were. Like, the last time I saw Electro in anything, it was the Max Dillon version as played by Jamie Foxx in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), and I've never encountered the character in the comics, so I had no idea that Electro was currently a woman. Which is fine, I have no problem with that, but she wasn't even in costume in this issue so all I saw was a character with electricity powers, which could've been anyone. I also had no idea who Agony was since I don't keep up with the various Venom/Carnage symbiotes that seem to populate the Marvel Comics Universe.

Izaakse's artwork is pretty good. He's also someone I'm not familiar with. Though according to the Marvel Wiki, he's done alot with the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and worked on both Civil War II and Secret Empire. All books I've never read. He's good though. I like his artstyle.

Overall this was a pretty good read. I have issue #2 so I'll be reviewing that at some point down the line, though I'm not sure when yet. I felt the story stood on it's own pretty well given that it came off an event book, AND has the history of the older Thunderbolts series behind it both in the Marvel Universe and in the real world. The artwork is also pretty good. I'm not sure how much of this series I'll be able to keep up with, but I would definitely recommend this issue to those of you who read comics and haven't picked up an issue of Thunderbolts before. It's also not required to have read Devil's Reign before picking up this issue. Which is good.

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back later in the week with more posts, and possibly even my review of Power Rangers Turbo. But we'll see. Until then have a great rest of your day, evening or whenever you're reading this, and I'll talk to you all later. Take care.

Pokemon: Let's Go Pikachu! (2018) Thoughts and Discussion

 Hey everyone! I'm back. As promised I'll be talking about Pokemon: Let's Go, Pikachu! for the Nintendo Switch. Like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate this game, along with it's counterpart, Let's Go, Eevee!, came out in 2018, and I got it less than a year after its release. Like with my last post on Super Smash Bro. Ultimate, this isn't a review of the game, as I haven't completed it yet. It's just my thoughts on the game so far and some observations on what I've accomplished on the game up to the point I'm currently at. So, let's get back into it.

Pokemon: Let's Go, Pikachu! and it's counterpart, Let's Go, Eevee!, is a remake of the 1998/1999 Game Boy game, Pokemon Yellow Version and once again incorporates elements from the first season of the TV series. It was also the last game to come out in Generation VII following Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon in 2016 and Pokemon Ultra Sun and Pokemon Ultra Moon in 2017, both for the Nintendo 3DS. The last Pokemon games I played brand new was Pokemon Gold and Pokemon Silver, which came out in Japan in 1999 and came out in North America in 2000. So I was a little behind on things. 

As I said in my Pokemon TV show and movie reviews, my siblings were bigger Pokemon fans than I was in the late '90s and early 2000s. I watched the TV show up to the end of the second season, Adventures in the Orange Islands, while peeking in on season 3, The Johto Journeys, and I played the first five games, but I didn't really do much with the franchise after that aside from playing Pokemon Stadium and Pokemon Snap on the N64 and Pokemon Pinball on the Game Boy Color. But when Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! were announced and saw that it was basically a 3D remake of Pokemon Yellow I decided I was going to get one or the other of the games. With my sister being a huge Pokemon fan she also wanted the game. So we got together and decided that I would get Let's Go, Pikachu! and she would get Let's Go, Eevee! so that between the two of us we'd have the complete Pokedex. It took me awhile to get the game of course, but I got it finally in 2019. 

Since then I've gotten the first three badges and gotten a ton of Pokemon. Mostly because they altered the game's mechanics so that rather than getting random Pokemon battles, you can see the Pokemon in the overworld so that if it's one you've already caught or you just don't feel like catching a wild Pokemon, you can avoid them. But on the flipside of that, if there's a specific Pokemon you need, or want, and it appears on the screen in the grassy area, then you can go right to them instead of having to walk back and forth until a wild Pokemon sighting happens, hoping it's one you need. 

And because the way you catch Pokemon in this game is how it was in the Safari Zone in the first three games, you can't fight the wild Pokemon to weaken them before catching them. So it makes it harder to catch them because you're catching them at full strength. It's also annoying because you can't just fight the wild Pokemon to level up your own team, and you can't run, so you have to catch the Pokemon every single time you engage with the wild ones. Luckily your entire team gains experience points everytime you catch a Pokemon so there are upsides and downsides to the new mechanic for catching Pokemon.

As for the gym badges, the first two were the easiest to get. Particularly the Water Badge in Cerulean City. I have Pikachu as my Electric type, and it easily beat Misty's Water type Pokemon. The Thunder Badge in Vermillion City was the more difficult one of the three. Mostly because I don't have any high level Ground type. I did have Sandshrew though, so I taught it Dig and used that together with Pikachu's Normal type attacks, a few potions and a revive. And that was my main goal when I played the game last night. to beat Lt. Surge and win the Thunder Badge. And with this being my first time playing the game, I discovered that when you get the Thunder Badge, Misty shows up, heals your Pokemon and then takes you to Diglett's Cave. Which is interesting.

Anyways, that's all I have to say for now since I didn't go into Diglett's Cave last night. I'm saving that for tomorrow since I have Star Trek: Prodigy on tonight. So that's gonna be it for me for today. I'll be back at some point with a comic book review. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018) Thoughts and Discussion

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm gonna be talking video games. Specifically Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Pokemon: Let's Go Pikachu! for the Nintendo Switch. I'm doing separate posts on each game with this one, as you could tell from the title, will be on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and my next post will be on Let's Go Pikachu! just so I can give each game it's due. So let's get into it.

As someone who spent numerous hours playing Super Smash Bros. on the Nintendo 64 in the late '90s, all through the 2000s and into the early 2010s, I've continued to have an interest in the series through the GameCube and into the Nintendo Wii U. Though the only games in the series I haven't played are Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS for the Nintendo 3DS. I've only played the two most recent games, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch, once each at a friend's place in the mid to late 2010s. I did better on Ultimate though because the controls were more standard for it than the Wii U game's controls were. And that's just because the Wii U is weird in terms of the controls. But that's not what I'm here to talk about today.

So because I had already played Ultimate at a friend's house a few years ago on New Year's Eve, when I was at the drugstore, getting my Covid booster, I happened to see the game on the rack behind the cashier and I grabbed it because I haven't personally owned a Super Smash Bros. game since the original on the N64, which I ended up having to get rid of almost a decade ago, and we haven't had a Super Smash Bros. game in the house since Super Smash Bros.: Melee on the GameCube and that was just since my younger brother moved out since the GameCube was his. I don't remember if he owned the game or just rented it. Anyways I didn't start playing Ultimate as soon as I got home like I would normally do because, well, I had a sore arm since I'd just gotten my booster shot. I finally got to it last night and I felt like I was back in the summer of 1999, playing it up at the cottage with friends and my siblings.

Because the game was brand new, it just had your basic starter characters, Mario, Link, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Samus, Fox, and Pikachu, which I'm fine with because I'm used to those characters and played as them for years on the N64. For my first round I picked the classic Donkey Kong Country stage from the first Super Smash Bros. game. And then I went and played as Kirby and fought against Mario. Why? Because even after all these years I still find it funny to suck my opponent up and use their own abilities against them. I won though it was a close match since I was playing against a computer opponent and get used to the controls again after having not played it since 2018. And while the item drops look slightly different, playing on that level, with those characters was awesome.

Immediately after that round I had to fight Ness in order to unlock him. I did, I won, and I unlocked him. Now, because I've never played Earthbound for the Super Nintendo before, I only know Ness from the Smash Bros. games, so I got really excited when I was able to unlock him almost immediately. And then I became adventurous and played as Ness against Link on a stage I wasn't familiar with as a stage in a Smash Bros. game, but was VERY familiar with from my childhood. That map was the Duck Hunt stage, complete with 2D, 8-bit graphics, both ducks, and the laughing dog.

Yes my friends, I played a round of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on the stage based on the classic 1984/1985 NES game, Duck Hunt. And just like in the original NES game, if you miss the ducks, even if you're busy beating the crap out of your opponent, the blue sky in the background turns pink for a moment as the ducks fly away and then the dog pops up and laughs at you. Oh and the stage is laid out like the actual screen if you were playing the NES game on a modern TV, with the black bars on either side, and in order to knock your opponent off the stage, you have to knock them into the black bars on other side. Which I thought was a cool function of the level.

Obviously I have tons more characters to unlock and lots more rounds to play, but last night was basically me testing myself to see if I still had the touch when playing a Super Smash Bros. game in 2022. And yeah, I still do. Which means playing against my friends is gonna be so much fun. I just had alot of fun playing Super Smash Bros. again since it had been awhile. And that was with the added bonus of having the dog from Duck Hunt laughing at me again. Anyways, I'll probably do a bigger review of the game once I've unlocked more stuff. I just wanted to give my thoughts on the rounds I played last night because both were nostalgic and lots of fun.

Alright my friends, that's gonna be it for me for now. I'll be back later with some thoughts about Pokemon: Let's Go Pikachu!, also for the Nintendo Switch. Right now though I'm going to have some lunch and then go outside for a bit before I come back for my next post. Later.

Pokemon: The Movie 2000 (1999/2000) Movie Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I haven't started watching Power Rangers Turbo yet, but I'm gonna get to that this weekend I think. I have other things to do like play my Nintendo Switch, and get some comic books read so I can review them, so we shall see. Today though I'm here to do a movie review that I've been wanting to do since September, but haven't gotten to it. Today I'm gonna be talking about Pokemon: The Movie 2000, which came out in Japan in 1999 and came out here in North America in 2000. I'm only talking about the English dub as that's what I have on VHS. There will be potential spoilers for this movie, so if you haven't seen it before, just be aware of that. Without further ado, let's get into it.

Pokemon: The Movie 2000 is another movie I completely missed when it came out. I remember seeing commercials for it on TV, but I never saw it. Not on TV, not on home video, and not in theatres. I don't think my siblings saw it either, unlike Pokemon: The First Movie. By the time this movie came out, I had pretty much stopped watching the Anime regularly and while new Game Boy games had been announced, I wasn't sure if my siblings and I would be getting them. I also wasn't as big of a Pokemon fan as my siblings were either. Not at that time anyway.

I honestly think this movie is better than Pokemon: The First Movie is, and as you know from my review, I really like that movie. The stakes feel much much higher in this movie than they ever really did in the TV show and in the first movie. In the TV show it's much more about Ash's journey as a Pokemon trainer, as well as stopping Team Rocket's small scale plans to steal Pokemon. And the first movie was stopping the very disturbing plans of Mewtwo, which didn't really seem to affect the human characters. Here though the disruption of the balance between the Legendary Pokemon, Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, by Lawrence III (I'll get to him later) not only had impact on Ash, his friends, Team Rocket, and the Pokemon, but on the entire world, which is very unusual to see in the Pokemon franchise as a whole. Before I go more in depth on the movie, I want to talk about where Pokemon was as a franchise when the movie came out in North America.

When the movie came out in Japan on July 17th, 1999, Nintendo and GameFreak were preparing to release the Generation II games, Pokemon Gold and Silver Versions, which were due to be released on November 21st, 1999, as well as gearing up to begin airing the third season, The Johto Journeys, which was due to begin airing on October 14th, 1999 in Japan. In North America however, things were a bit different.

In 1998, Pokemon exploded into popularity with the Anime's first season/series, Pokemon: Indigo League, as well as the Generation I games, Pokemon Red and Blue Versions for the Nintendo Game Boy, and Pokemon: The Trading Card Game. Indigo League ended in North America on November 27th, 1999, and was about to make a transition.

Three major events happened for Pokemon in 1999, besides the end of the first season. The first is that Pokemon Yellow Version, which took Red and Blue and incorporated more elements from the Anime, with Pikachu being your starter Pokemon which follows you around, the characters's clothing in the artwork for the game resembling what they wear in the Anime, and Jessie and James being the members of Team Rocket that you interact with throughout the game, on October 18th, 1999. The second is that Pokemon: The First Movie was released in theatres on November 12th, 1999, and introduced the audience to Snubbell and Marill, two Pokemon that would appear in the Generation II games. And the final thing is that season 2 of the Anime, Adventures in the Orange Islands began airing on Kids' WB in the United States and on YTV here in Canada, on December 4th, 1999. Aside from the location the only real difference between season 1 and season 2 is that Brock stayed behind on Valencia Island to study Pokemon with Professor Ivy in the third episode of season 2, and is replaced in the trio with Tracey, who only appeared in the second season of the Anime and the second movie.

When Pokemon: The Movie 2000 came out in North America on July 21st, 2000, Gold and Silver had already come out and The Johto Journeys was about to finish airing in Japan.

But here in North America, Gold and Silver weren't due to come out until October 15th, 2000, and The Johto Journeys wasn't due to start airing until the day before the games were due to release. But this movie and the short it was released with, Pikachu's Rescue Adventure, debuted a bunch of Gen II Pokemon, that Japanese audiences were already familiar with as the movie had already come out in Japan, The Johto Journeys was almost over, and Gold and Silver were already released. The Gen II debuts in this movie, and it's short, are Ledyba, Elekid, Bellossom, Hoothoot, and Lugia. And of course, Marill, which I think appeared in Adventures in the Orange Islands after it debuted in Pikachu's Vacation in 1998 in Japan and 1999 in North America, alongside Snubbell. 

While Tracey doesn't have a whole lot to do in this movie, Misty has this English dub subplot of Melody, the girl they meet on Shamouti Island, teasing Misty about her relationship with Ash, due to the fact that in North America there had been some speculation that Ash and Misty were actually in love with each other. It's not intrusive, but being that the English dialogue isn't just a translation of the Japanese dialogue, moments that were focused on Ash and Misty's relationship probably focused on other things in the original Japanese version. 

Team Rocket has a very interesting role in this movie. Jessie, James, and Meowth are heroes in this movie. Aside from the very beginning of the movie, they help Ash the entire time against Lawrence III, and in trying to stop the Legendary Pokemon from destroying the world after Lawrence III disrupted the balance between the three Legendarys. Which is a huge switch for them. But I love how they're afraid of what Giovanni will do to them for actually doing good instead of being the bad guys. It's funny because when they showed up to help Ash and Pikachu get to the final shrine to get the orb of ice, I actually thought to myself, "Wow, Giovanni is gonna be pissed when he finds out that instead of taking advantage of the situation and stealing Pikachu, and other Pokemon, Jessie, James, and Meowth helped Ash and his friends!". And sure enough, Meowth expresses the same sentiment at the end of the movie.

Speaking of Lawrence III, he's lame antagonist. Once Ash and the others escape his flying fortress, which looks like the base of operations for a group of villains from a season of Super Sentai and/or Power Rangers, you only see him two or three more times in the entire movie, and two of those times he tries to capture Lugia, which was his entire goal in the first place. It didn't work obviously, but still. And he was doing it because he wanted to complete his collection that started with an Ancient Mew card. So in a way, he wasn't actually a villain, just a misguided collector, who didn't do his research into what he wanted to collect. Which sounds like it's trying to teach the fans something about collecting, which I'm pretty sure that's exactly what it was trying to do. And because of certain things happening in the world today, Lawrence III's behaviour felt more timely to today than it does to 22 years ago. 

3D animation is used in a scene or two, and honestly it's much better blended into the 2D animation that is the dominant art style of the movie. With Pokemon: The First Movie you could tell when CG was being used because it stood out among the 2D animation much how it did in other animated movies in the late '90s like Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (1997) and Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero (1998). But here, you can tell what's 3D animation, but it's not as in your face about it like the last movie was.

While the soundtrack for Pokemon: The First Movie was filled with Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears and other Pop icons of the late '90s and early 2000s, the soundtrack for Pokemon: The Movie 2000 is filled with more indie Pop artists from the early 2000s, as well as artists and bands from the '80s and early '90s. For example O-Town, a group I only know of through their song, "All or Nothing" from their 2001 debut album, O-Town, has two songs on this album, while Donna Summer had been a singer that was active from 1968 until her death in 2012, while the B-52's did "Love Shack" in 1989, began in 1976, and continued to perform until this year, as according to Wikipedia, they're currently on a final farewell tour that's ending on November 11th, 2022. Also, how did I not know that Weird Al Yankovic has a track on this soundtrack, which plays during the credits at the end of the movie, AND is a song about Pokemon, called "Polkamon"? Like really? I mean, I know this was my first time watching this movie, but it's Weird Al doing a Pokemon song, the year after he'd done "The Saga Begins", his second Star Wars parody song after 1985's "Yoda". Of course they didn't exactly play Weird Al's songs on the radio station I was listening to in 2000, so that's probably why I didn't know "Polkamon" exists. 

 

Pokemon: The Movie 2000 was released on VHS and DVD on November 14th, 2000. I have the VHS in my collection and it opens with a preview for the third Pokemon movie, Pokemon 3: The Movie - Spell of the Unown: Entei, which was due to be released in North American theatres on April 6th, 2001 and would be the final Pokemon to be released theatrically in North America until 2018 when Detective Pikachu came out. After the sneak preview, there's a commercial for Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, which was due to come out on VHS and DVD on December 12th, 2000, Hey You Pikachu! which was due to come out for the Nintendo 64, the Pokemon Trading Card Game League, and DVD and VHS releases for Powerpuff Girls and Dexter's Laboratory, and the home video release (VHS and DVD) for My Dog Skip (2000), which had come out theatrically earlier in the year.

Overall Pokemon: The Movie 2000 is a great movie. While Pokemon: The First Movie is more nostalgic because I saw bits and pieces of it on TV when I was a teenager and it covers the original run of the Anime, which I watched all the time with my siblings, Pokemon: The Movie 2000 is a better made movie. With alot more suspense to it than the first movie had. It also has greater character moments, where Ash is wondering if he's the right person to save the world. Which is different from his usual self, who is arrogant in the way he takes on challenges as a Pokemon trainer and that attitude often gets Ash and his friends into trouble. I definitely recommend watching this movie if you're a fan of Pokemon.

That's gonna be it for me for today my friends. I plan on playing my Nintendo Switch tonight for a little while because I have Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Pokemon: Let's Go Pikachu! to play, so I might do a blog post on one of those games tomorrow. We'll see. In the meantime have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.