Pre-Season Thoughts on The Mandalorian Season 3

 Hey everyone, how were your weekends? Mine was quiet. So today I'm here for a pre-season discussion about season 3 of The Mandalorian, which debuts on Disney+ on Wednesday. Nothing fancy, just my thoughts and feelings going into the new season. I am going to be touching on things that happened in season 2 as well as things that happened in The Book of Boba Fett since both Mando and Grogu played major roles in the last three episodes of that show, so if you haven't seen those yet, please do so before reading this post, but I'm pretty sure that most Star Wars fans have watched both of them several times by now. So let's get into it.

Even though both Din Djarin, a.k.a. the Mandalorian, and Grogu, a.k.a. Baby Yoda, appeared in episodes 5, 6, and 7 of The Book of Boba Fett, I was reminded yesterday that it's been a little over two years since season 2 of The Mandalorian came out. So even though we've seen both characters since then, we still haven't seen their supporting cast, like Greef Karga since the end of season 2. Same with Bo-Katan Kryze. So it's exciting to return to that part of the Star Wars Universe after more than two years.

One of the things that I'm excited about with this season is that we can jump right in without having to take the time to reunite Din and Grogu after Grogu went to train with Luke Skywalker at the end of season 2. Obviously that's because they handled that in the finale of The Book of Boba Fett, but it's nice that we don't have to worry about that at the beginning of season 3. I found that the first couple of episodes of season 2 dragged a little bit because there wasn't a whole lot going on that advanced the season's story apart from reintroducing Din and Grogu, and introducing us to Paul Sun-Hyung Lee's character, New Republic pilot Captain Carson Teva in "Chapter 10". They were still good episodes, but, they slowed the season down for me.

According to Jon Favreau, who is the showrunner and writer for season 3, this season is going to delve more into the culture and history of the Mandalorian race, and we're going to be going to Mandalore itself. While I'm not a huge fan of the Mandalorians, being that I haven't seen all of The Clone Wars or Rebels and they didn't really start to be given much attention outside of the occasional appearance of Boba Fett in the comics and novels until they began showing up towards the end of The New Jedi Order novel series in 2004 and then didn't start getting fleshed out until Karen Traviss got a hold of them in the second book in the Legacy of the Force series, Bloodlines, in 2006, I'm interested to see how Favreau handles the Mandalorian mythos that Dave Filoni set up in both Clone Wars and Rebels, since they've been using that material for all three seasons of this show, rather than the Legends stuff that Karen Traviss worked out and wrote about in an article published in Star Wars Insider #86 back in 2006, just before Bloodlines came out. 

I'm also excited to see what the fall out of Grogu's decision to abandon his Jedi training with Luke to go back to Din at the end of The Book of Boba Fett is going to be. It was such a quick, offscreen, decision for him to make so it'll be interesting to see where that goes as season 3 progresses.

There's also the fate of the Darksaber, and what Moff Gideon has in store for the Mandalorians. He's gonna be out for revenge given that the Mandos defeated him on his own cruiser in "Chapter 16" (season 2, episode 8) and destroyed his Dark Troopers with the help of Luke Skywalker.

I don't know if Favreau and/or Filoni have said this, but I wonder if anything will be setup for Ahsoka, which is coming out later this year. I mean we got setup for this season in The Book of Boba Fett, and we got little bits of Ahsoka's story in season 2 of The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and in the Tales of the Jedi animated series. So it's possible that there will be some sort of setup at some point in this season, possibly either in "Chapter 20" (episode 4) or "Chapter 23" (episode 7) since Filoni cowrote those two episodes with Favreau AND Favreau co-developed Ahsoka with Filoni, it being a spin-off of The Mandalorian. I don't know for sure though as I don't think either of them have said anything about that in any interview or press event leading up to the season premiere, which is coming up on Wednesday. 

Honestly, I'm really excited for this season. Apart from it having been a little over two years since this show has been on, there's so much lore to discover this season. Some was hinted at in both season 1 and season 2, some will be follow-ups and additions to what Filoni did in both Clone Wars and Rebels, and some will be brand new information given to us, the audience, for the first time. It's exciting and fun and I'm interested to see where it all goes. Who knows, it might give me the incentive to watch The Clone Wars and Rebels all the way through just so I understand what's going on a little bit better. We'll see though.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back soon for more blog posts, including a review of the season premiere of The Mandalorian on Wednesday. So until then have a great afternoon and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Star Trek #52 (1993) Comic Book Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm reviewing a comic book that returned to my collection after almost seven years. I found it at the Carleton Place Comic Con when Brad and I were there on Monday. I got it for $1 thanks to the owner of the booth I found it at. So let's get into it and take a look at Star Trek #52 from 1993, written by Diane Duane and art by Rod Whigham (Penciller) and Arne Starr (Inker).

I didn't mention this issue when I did the segment on the 1989-1996 TOS comic book series during my DC Comics's Star Trek retrospective, simply because I didn't remember anything about the story as it had been six years since I'd read it last. But reading it for this review, I remembered just how much I used to enjoy reading this issue when I was a kid.

Unlike the original TOS movies that came out between 1979 and 1991, the comics, particularly these later issues published by DC in the late '80s to mid-'90s, tended to do a better job at utilizing the TOS formula because each issue felt like an episode of the TV show. In this issue, the Enterprise-A has been ordered to the planet, Theata Leonis, to make first contact with a pre-warp civilization known as the Atyansa, who communicated with a survey team and informed them they wished to meet Kirk, Spock, and McCoy specifically, by name. Being that this civilization is technologically equal to Humans from 16th Century Earth, Kirk and the crew find it peculiar that they'd be asked for by name given that the Atyansa have no presence in the wider galaxy and neither the Enterprise nor the Enterprise-A have ever visited the planet before. So they beam down to find out what this is all about, but shortly after, a Klingon Battle Cruiser decloaks and begins laying claim to the planet, despite the fact that it's nowhere near Klingon territory, because that's what the Klingons did back in TOS. So Scotty, who Kirk left in command, has to figure out how to keep the Klingons from beaming down to the planet surface as Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are unarmed as per the Prime Directive. Which doesn't make sense, since I'm pretty sure that the landing party was armed anytime Kirk and the crew beamed down to a primitive planet.

As I mentioned in my DC Star Trek retrospective, I'm not as big of a fan of TOS as I am the later Star Trek shows. The only two episodes I have more than vague recollections of watching when I was a kid are the season 3 episodes, "The Enterprise Incident" and "The Empath" and that's because I had those episodes on VHS. Most of what I know about TOS I got through the movies, particularly Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) as those are the TOS movies that I watched the most when I was a kid, and of course, these comics. It wasn't until the Remastered versions began airing in 2006 that I really began watching TOS.

While this issue was never one of my favourites growing up, preferring the multi-issue story arcs like "The Tabukan Syndrome" from issues #36-40 and "Time Crime" from issues #53-57 (I only had 53-56 for that storyline), it was still an issue I read quite often. And I think that's because the artwork is so good and I think Whigham and Starr do a good job at not only accurately portraying Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura as if they were being played by Shatner, Nimoy, Kelley, Doohan, and Nichols, but got the Bridge and the Transporter Room, the only two sections of the Enterprise that we see in this issue. Many of my complaints about the first DC Comics TOS comic book series come from the fact that they don't often accurately depict the locations on the ship, usually exaggerating them to the point where they look so generic that it's no longer the ship we know and love, though it did get better closer to the end of the series. Even today the artwork on this, and all of the issues from this second DC TOS series, holds up extremely well.

Even though the story is your typical paint by numbers TOS TV show episode from the '60s, but made in the '90s and set in the period of time between Star Trek V and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) instead of during the Five Year Mission as shown in the TV series, the best part of this issue is the artwork. Plus the ads that are in the comic. Particularly the inside of the front and back covers. On the inside front cover it's an ad for The Adventures of Superman #504, which is an issue that came out near the end of the "Reign of the Supermen" story arc that followed The Death of Superman and "Funeral for a Friend" which was collected in the World Without a Superman trade paperback. The inside of the back cover is an ad for Detective Comics #666, which was part 18 of Knightfall. These ads are a really good tell that this book came out during the two biggest storylines that DC was doing at the time with Superman and Batman. Though the Knightfall Saga was just beginning, The Death and Return of Superman was coming to a close. So it was a very interesting time for comic book fans in 1993. 

Besides the artwork though, Spock and McCoy and their banter are still my favourite part of this issue, and of TOS and the TOS movies in general. It was so cleverly written, and written in a way that Spock always outwitted McCoy, no matter what "argument" they were having. It's great. And I loved it at the beginning where the Atyansa gave Spock more fuel against McCoy by calling the good doctor, "McCoy of the Complaints". Since I hadn't read this issue in seven years, I completely forgot about that part, but it brought a smile to my face, especially because Spock does use it at the end of the issue.

Overall this is a good issue to pick up if you just want a typical TOS story to read without delving into the big storylines or reading things that get a bit crazy. It's a fun standalone issue. Though it being almost 30 years old and not collected in a trade paperback, unless Eaglemoss got to it before they went out of business, the best place to find it is at a flea market, geek sale, or convention. Maybe the back issue bins at your local comic book store, if you're lucky. I recommend reading it though.

Alright my friends that's gonna be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more reviews and blog posts in the near future. So until then have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) Movie Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? Did you all have a good long weekend? I did. I went out with Brad yesterday and went to small convention in a town that's west of where I live, and we went to a thrift store there too. At the convention I picked up one comic and two VHS tapes, and at the thrift store I picked up two VHS tapes and two DVDs. One of those VHS tapes that I got at the thrift store was the 1996 Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection release of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which was one of the first animated Disney movies to be released on home video in the early '80s, but wasn't re-released on home video as part of the Walt Disney Classics line in the mid-'80s to mid-'90s. Naturally, after rewinding the two tapes that I got at the convention, I watched The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh on VHS. So I'll be reviewing the movie today. So let's get into it!

The 1970s was a weird time for Disney, particularly for the animation department. Walt had died in 1966, during production of The Jungle Book, and Roy, Walt's brother and business partner, died in 1971 while Robin Hood was in production. As such the animation department started to become less and less of a priority for the heads of the studio as they focused more and more on live action comedies such as Herbie Rides Again (1974) and Freaky Friday (1976). This resulted in Disney not releasing any animated feature films in 1974, 1975, and 1976. Even though production on both this movie and The Rescuers, which was also released in 1977, had begun by 1975. Unlike other Disney animated movies that had come out since Cinderella was originally released in 1950, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a package film similar to what the studio had produced in the mid to late '40s, both during and after World War II.

The first featurette is Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), which Walt was heavily involved in the production of.

The second was Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968), which Walt greenlit, but ultimately never saw to completion as he passed away in 1966.

The final featurette to be edited into the movie is Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974), which Wolfgang Reitherman, who directed all of the animated feature films and animated featurettes from 101 Dalmatians (1961) to The Rescuers (1977) and produced all of the animated feature films from The Aristocats (1970) to The Fox and the Hound (1981), greenlit and produced in the early '70s. All three featurettes were individually released on VHS multiple times from 1986 to 2000, as well as being released as part of this movie. 

Many documentaries including the introduction at the beginning of the 1996 VHS release, and the behind the scenes featurette on the 2002 VHS and DVD releases for the movie, have said that Walt had always intended to make Winnie the Pooh into a movie, but decided to go with short featurettes to start with as Americans weren't as familiar with the original Winnie the Pooh books by A.A. Milne as the British people were. However I don't think Walt intended on editing the featurettes together into a feature film. Mainly because he'd only gotten Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree and Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day made, and both featurettes are only 25 minutes long, so combining those two together, only makes 50 minutes of content, which, by the 1960s there hadn't been an animated feature shorter than 75 to 80 minutes since the first package film, Saludos Amigos was released in 1943. So I think that Walt intended to simply make a Winnie the Pooh animated feature film without editing the featurettes together, because as we saw with Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin (1997) and Winnie the Pooh (2011), the Disney Winnie the Pooh movies can be original productions but still use story elements from the source material. Not to mention there were, and are, plenty of unadapted stories in the two Winnie the Pooh books, plus a third book, Return to the Hundred Acre Wood (2009), that contains stories not adapted by Disney.

I love The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. It's one of my favourite Disney movies of all time, but I technically didn't grow up with it. I say technically because I had the three individual featurettes on VHS when I was a kid, and still have two of them on that format now, but I didn't own a copy of the feature film version until I got the 2002 DVD release sometime in the 2010s. I do remember seeing the feature film version on TV around the time that the movie was re-released on VHS as part of the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection but I don't remember when exactly it was on TV.

I grew up with these characters, both the Disney versions, and the original versions from Milne's stories. There was never a time where they didn't appear on TV or in movies when I was growing up, and with the featurettes on constant repeat these characters are as much a part of my life as any other TV show and movie characters. My favourites have always been Pooh, Piglet, and Tigger. Pooh because he's silly, Piglet because he's small and fearful, and Tigger because he's funny, and full of energy.

The way the shorts themselves are set up it's almost like watching six stories in one movie. Each segment is split up into two stories that are connected to each other through a theme. For example, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day is about wind and rain storms in the Hundred Acre Wood. And because the original Winnie the Pooh stories were written with children in mind, the stories adapted into this movie are easy to follow. Of course, being that I watched all three of the segments in this movie individually constantly, I have all the lines memorized, including the narrator's dialogue. I am a geek afterall.

Of course the voice cast of this movie consists of all the Disney staples from the '40s, '50s, and '60s, Sebastian Cabot as the Narrator, Paul Winchell as Tigger, Sterling Holloway as Pooh, Junius Matthews as Rabbit, Hal Smith as Owl, John Fiedler as Piglet, Barbara Luddy as Kanga, and Ralph Wright as Eeyore. Clint Howard voiced Roo in the first two segments, but was replaced by Dori Whitaker in Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too. Christopher Robin had three voice actors. Bruce Reitherman, the son of the director, voiced him in the first segment, Jon Walmsley, who played Jason on The Waltons (1972-1981), voiced him in the second segment, as well as in the final scene that was shot specifically for this movie, and Timothy Turner voiced him in the final segment. Christopher Robin is the only character to have a different voice actor for all four of the original Winnie the Pooh featurettes, as he would have another one voice him in Winnie the Pooh and A Day for Eeyore (1983), which I reviewed on this blog about a year or two ago. Actually, come to think of it, I think he's the only character in Disney's Winnie the Pooh franchise to have a different voice actor for every movie and TV show the character is in. 

Overall The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a great movie. It's one of Disney's animated movies that used to get released on home video every six to ten years, but hasn't been released on DVD or Blu-ray since 2013. And individually they haven't been released since 2000, though Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day was released by itself as a bonus feature on the 2006 DVD for Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin, but was not included on the 2018 Disney Movie Club exclusive 20th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray release. This movie is on Disney+ and I think the 2013 Blu-ray is still in print. So if you've never seen it before, for whatever reason, you can still check it out.

That's it for me for today. I will be back tomorrow for a review of the comic book that I got yesterday at the con I went to. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Star Trek: Picard S03E01, "The Next Generation" (2023) TV Show Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Sorry for my lack of posts this week, but I decided to take the week off, except for this review, since I didn't get time off during the holidays. Today though I'm going to be reviewing the first episode of season 3 of Star Trek: Picard which aired yesterday. There will be some spoilers for the episode as there a few things in the episode that I want to talk about, but they aren't major story elements since it is a new episode that just came out. So let's get into it!

First, I have to say that I love this poster they put out for the season. It's bright, shows all of the major characters, and reminds me of the old Star Trek comic book and novel covers from the '80s and early '90s. It's probably my favourite poster out of all the current Star Trek shows besides the season 1 poster for Strange New Worlds.

After season 2 disappointed pretty much everyone with how incoherent it was, I did not have high hopes for season 3. Despite the return of my favourite cast of Star Trek characters ever, again, aside from the cast of Strange New Worlds, I did not have high hopes for this season, the way I did with Q and Guinan's return for season 2. Mainly because, while I liked the first season I was not in love with it the way I wanted to be with the return of my favourite Star Trek Captain, Jean-Luc Picard. There was too much about it that didn't feel like Star Trek just because of how violent and pessimistic it was for a franchise based on optimism and exploration. And so I hoped that that was simply because of season 1 weirdness that most TV shows have and that it would get better in the second season. Which it didn't. It got worse. This episode exceeded my low expectations simply because it gave us things to sink our teeth into with the mystery that Beverly Crusher gave Picard and Riker while the first two seasons felt aimless.

The first thing I want to talk about is the music. Besides the themes from Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), there are alot of musical cues from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) particularly in the spacedock scenes with Picard and Riker on the U.S.S. Titan-A, a refitted version of Riker's old command, which we've seen on Lower Decks. In fact the entire inspection/departing from spacedock scene was basically lifted directly from Star Trek II, including the music. Though the interior of spacedock itself is very much like the spacedock we saw in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), as well as, more recently, in certain episodes of Lower Decks. There are scenes where the music is original to this show, but the vast majority of it are from previous Star Trek shows and movies. But like it did in the season 1 finale of Lower Decks, my face lit up when Jerry Goldsmith's Star Trek theme, which he originally wrote for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and was reused for The Next Generation, Star Trek V and as the ending themes for First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), and Star Trek Nemesis (2002), played during the closing credits of this episode. It's the theme I'm most familiar with since it was the opening theme for TNG for seven seasons. 

One of the things I loved about this episode is that it was the first time that Picard and Riker went on a mission together, just the two of them. I guess you could say that the two part episode from season 7 of TNG, "Gambit", had them on a mission together, but it was unintentional, as Picard was thought to be dead and Riker was captured by the renegade crew Picard was investigating. But this is the first time that Picard and Riker are on a mission together for the entire episode, which I loved, because the chemistry between Sir Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes is astounding and always has been, even 30 years ago when TNG was first on the air. For example, during the scene where the Titan leaves spacedock, Picard and Riker are on the Bridge with Seven of Nine, who is the ship's first officer, under the name, Annika Hansen, and when Picard asks Seven if they should inform Engineering that they're going to warp 9.99, and Seven explains that it's no longer protocol on the new ships as it's all automated, Riker says, "Excellent recovery, Admiral" and Picard responds with, "Shut it, Will.", I laughed my ass off, which is the first time I've actually laughed at anything in Picard since it was so dark and serious in the first two seasons. 

Also the new captain of the Titan, Liam Shaw, played by Todd Stashwick, is a jerk. I think, aside from Captain Lorca, who turned out to be his Mirror Universe counterpart, Shaw is the first Starfleet captain I have outright hated on any Star Trek show or movie. I'm not counting Captain Styles from Star Trek III, simply because he was proud of the Excelsior. But Shaw is outright bigoted against both Seven and Picard because of their pasts as Borg, and dismissive of Riker as well. I honestly hope that Seven decks him at some point during the season, or at the very least, takes him down a peg, because he deserves it.

There are so many TNG easter eggs in this episode. The biggest one for me is at the beginning of the episode where Beverly is listening to the last log entry that Picard made before he was captured by the Borg in "The Best of Both Worlds Part I" at the end of TNG season 3. Apparently there were written logs from "Encounter at Farpoint" and "Unification I" on the screen of Beverly's computer terminal, which was an old style TNG version, but I couldn't tell. I looked it up on Memory Alpha. So that's pretty cool. Oh and the opening Stardate for "Encounter at Farpoint", Stardate 41153.7, was mentioned by Picard's home computer, which I loved.

I do think that Raffi's storyline feels super disconnected from the rest of the plot. At least in this episode since it might turn out that what Raffi is investigating is the same thing that Beverly investigating/running away from. But for  right now they seem to be completely disconnected and Raffi's storyline just isn't as interesting as what's going on in the main storyline with Picard, Riker, and Beverly. It has the potential to be interesting, it's just, right now it isn't. I don't hate it of course, it's just not where my focus is. Especially because they, once again, split Seven and Raffi up, not giving enough time for that relationship to develop to it's full potential. Which is extremely frustrating.

Overall this was a fantastic start to the final season of Picard. I'm excited to see Geordi La Forge, Worf, Deanna Troi, Lore, and Professor Moriarty in the coming episodes, and interested to see where this storyline is going. If you're a TNG fan, I recommend checking out this episode, even if you haven't seen the first two seasons, as they're all but irrelevant at this point.

And that my friends is it for me for this week, but I'll be back next week with more reviews. I probably won't be doing episode by episode reviews of season 3 of Picard like I did with season 1 of Strange New Worlds, but if there's an episode I particularly like in the season I'll talk about it on here. So until next time have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.  

The Andalite Chronicles by K.A. Applegate (1997) Book Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Thursday. It's one week until the third season of Star Trek: Picard starts and I'm excited to see my favourite characters from TNG return, but I'm also extremely apprehensive because season 2 wasn't great. So hopefully that goes well. Today though I'm back for another book review. This time I am taking a look at The Andalite Chronicles by K.A. Applegate, and is the first prequel book in the Animorphs series (1996-2001), though it's the last one in the in-universe chronology. There will be spoilers for not only this book, but for others in the series too, so if you're not familiar with Animorphs be aware of that. Let's get into it.

The Andalite Chronicles represents a shift in the series as a whole. So far, we'd only had 13 books up to this point, 12 in the main series, and one in the Megamorphs side series, but, aside for Ax explaining to the Animorphs about Seerow's Kindness in book #8, The Alien, we hadn't really had any backstory on the Andalites or the Yeerks up to this point. Prince Elfangor, whose full name is Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, also wasn't an active character in the series since Visser Three had killed him at the beginning of the first book, right after he'd given the Animorphs their powers.

I first read this book in either late 1999 or early 2000. The school library had the original three book releases that Scholastic put out prior to the three parts being compiled into a single volume, which happened at the same time as the three volume version, because, if I'm not mistaken, the three volume version was available in the Scholastic book order, and were intended as library editions, while the thick single volume version was intended for the retail market. I think. I could be mistaken on that. It wasn't too long after that that I got the single volume version from Chapters and read that version shortly before the series ended in 2001.

So the book begins 21 years before Elfangor crashes in the Construction Site, and gives Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie, and Marco the ability to morph into any animal they touch. He's an Aristh, which is what Andalites call cadets, serving aboard the Dome Ship, StarSword, commanded by Captain Feyorn, alongside his fellow Aristh, Arbron. Arbron doesn't have a full name like most Andalites that we meet in this series, which is odd. Maybe because he wasn't going to be a main character beyond this book, whereas both Elfangor and Prince Alloran-Semitur-Corrass, i.e. future host for the Yeerk known as Visser Three, are vital characters to the Animorphs mythos. But when they find a Skrit-Na saucer ship leaving Earth, and meet two humans aboard, Hedrick Chapman. Yes, THAT Chapman. The man who would become the Vice-Principal at the school that the Animorphs attend, the father of Rachel's best friend, Melissa, and the host of Iniss 226. And yes, even as a kid, Chapman is a jerk, even becoming a temporary host of Visser Three, then known as Sub-Visser Seven, so that the Yeerk could gain control of Alloran as the first Andalite-Controller.

Of all of the Animorphs prequel novels, also known as the Animorphs Chronicles series, this is my favourite. I think it's because Elfangor and everything that happens in this book have a direct connection to the main series with Alloran being the host of Visser Three, Elfangor and Loren being Tobias's parents, which Tobias won't find out about Elfangor until book #23, The Pretender, and Elfangor being Ax's older brother. Plus the events in this novel lead right into the first book of the series, The Invasion in a way that neither The Hork-Bajir Chronicles and The Ellimist Chronicles don't, as both of those books are just extra material about side characters that don't immediately connect to the main series. And while the Ellimist does play a role in this book, and in the main series itself, it's fairly minor since he's not in every book in the series, only actually appearing four times in the main series and once in the Megamorphs books. Though in terms of the storyline of the series as a whole, the series wouldn't happen without the Ellimist. Yeah, it's a bit confusing, which is kind of why you should read this book in release order since your enjoyment of it will depend on your knowledge of the series as a whole. 

It can also be confusing because of the Time Matrix and everything going on with that. I love Elfangor though. He's such an interesting character to read about. There's alot of conflict within him. Especially after he learns that Alloran unleashed a Quantum Virus on the Hork-Bajir species, which was illegal, and responsible for the Yeerks conquering the once peaceful Hork-Bajir. He also ended up failing to save Arbron, who got stuck in a Taxxon morph after staying in morph over the two hour limit, which happens alot in Animorphs, besides Tobias staying in hawk morph of course, and was indirectly responsible for Esplin 9466/Sub-Visser Seven/Visser Thirty-Two/Visser Three gaining Alloran as a host, as he'd knocked Alloran out, not realizing that Esplin had infested Chapman before Elfangor had tossed his former Hork-Bajir host body out the airlock. 

Speaking of Alloran, he's a pretty disturbing character. He doesn't understand that by using the Quantum Virus, what he did was wrong and he won't take responsibility for that. As Loren put it, Alloran was screwed up by the war, which is what Vietnam veterans dealt with after they returned from that war. The only difference is that the war with the Yeerks was ongoing and the constant fighting had gotten to him. Which made him an easy target for the Yeerks given his instability. 

As for Esplin 9466, it doesn't matter what host body he's in, be it Hork-Bajir or Andalite, he's still the cartoon villain playing at being a force to be reckoned with. And I love that. This series gets really heavy and serious as it goes on, so it's nice to have a villain who is dangerous, but is also cheesy and incompetent at the same time.

In terms of the world building in this book, we learn so much about the Andalites, the Yeerks, and even the Hork-Bajir. That's one of the things I like about Animorphs. The world building is incredible and even the most minor detail is eventually addressed even if it doesn't get addressed until books that came out later on down the line. And sure, there are some things that are contradicted by later books, but you're going to have that with any long running book series. Especially if it runs long enough that you have to hire a ghostwriter to help you finish them if you're on a tight deadline like Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant were with Animorphs.

Reading this book for the first time in 20 years was pretty great. Like I said, I had the single volume version in my collection when I was a teenager in the 2000s, but we got rid of my Animorphs books sometime between 2010 and when we moved in 2016. But, I was at a used bookstore with Brad a couple of months ago and I found a copy for a cheap price, so I grabbed it. So it was fun to read it again after 20 years. Aside from what rank Visser Three was at at the beginning of the book, I remembered pretty much everything that happened in the book. Though I hadn't actually realized that Elfangor had messed up the timeline by re-aligning Loren's older age due to them aging rapidly near the Time Matrix within the universe they created or that the Ellimist sent her three years into the future to repair the timeline. This kind of thing is why I don't like time travel as a storytelling device. It just complicates things way too much. 

Overall this was a really great book to revisit all these years later. I wouldn't recommend it if you've never read an Animorphs book before, simply because there's just alot in it that relies heavily on the reader's knowledge of the series up to that point where this book was published. It was published between books 12 and 13 of the main series, and came out the same day as book 13, The Change, came out. And then there are other books that build upon information given here, so it's not a good book to read by itself unless you've already read the rest of the series. But if you're reading Animorphs from start to finish, either for the first time or the millionth time, it's definitely not a book to skip. 

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for today. I will be back with more blog posts soon though. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.    

The Fast and the Furious (2001) Movie Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? Did you all have a good weekend? I did. It was nice for a change, somewhat. Today I'm reviewing a movie that I didn't ever intend to review on this blog, in any of its incarnations over the last eight years. It's one I've never had any interest in and part of a franchise that I've never really had any interest in. But it was requested by a very good friend of mine, and I coincidentally ended up getting the entire franchise up to this point on DVD and Blu-ray from another friend of mine. So today I'll be reviewing The Fast and the Furious from 2001, starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jordana Brewster. There are going to be spoilers so I can talk about the end of the movie without worrying about having to not spoil anything about it. It's also an almost 22 year old movie at this point, so it's not like it's brand new or anything. Let's get into it.

The Fast and the Furious is a fascinating movie. Critics hated it but audiences loved it. This movie came out back in 2001, a time where superhero and comic book movies hadn't yet become popular. X-Men had just come out the year before, we wouldn't get Sam Raimi's Spider-Man for another year and we were still 11 years away from The Avengers (2012) grabbing everyone's attention and making superhero and comic book based movies and TV shows extremely popular. It was also months before both Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring would come out, starting those movie franchises. We even still had a year to wait before Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Star Trek Nemesis would come out. And it's an original idea too, inspired by, but not adapting, video games such as Grand Theft Auto and The Need for Speed, which ended up being adapted into a movie, Need for Speed, in 2014 oddly enough.

I remember when The Fast and the Furious was coming out. The advertisements for it were all over TV and even the radio if I remember correctly. And even though I was 14 going on 15 when the movie came out, I had no interest in watching it. Even after it was out on home video in 2002, I had no interest in the movie whatsoever. As most trailers do, the trailer for this movie focused on the races, the danger, and the shallow aspects of the movie, and as you know, I'm a character guy. I love diving into the motivations of characters and what makes them who they are. Which is exactly how you get to know people in real life. So when a trailer doesn't even hint at who the characters are, in a setting I don't care about, the movie isn't going to appeal to me. Though I do admit that when I saw the trailer for the 2019 spin-off, Hobbs & Shaw, in the theatres when I went to see Spider-Man: Far From Home, I thought it looked good, even though I hadn't seen the rest of the movies up to that point. So when I got the DVDs and Blu-rays from my friend and she showed me that all of the movies in this franchise were there, I jumped at the chance knowing I'd have more material for this blog.

What's crazy to me is that this movie's budget was $38 million, which is a very small budget even compared to other movies that came out the same year as The Fast and the Furious did. The crazy part is that the movie made $207.3 million at the worldwide box office with the domestic box office garnering $144.5 million. Against the $38 million budget, that's more than double the budget. Which I'm guessing that Universal was pleased with since they commissioned a sequel. Sort of. But, we'll get there, next week. 

The Fast and the Furious is about Brian O'Connor (played by Paul Walker), an LAPD cop who goes undercover with Dominic Toretto's crew to find out who's been hijacking DVD players from semi-trucks. Toretto, played by Vin Diesel, is a criminal and a man not to be crossed with. While on the job, Brian falls in love with Toretto's sister, Mia, played by Jordana Brewster and begins to wonder if everything is as cut and dry with Toretto's crew as his bosses have made it out to be.

As I said earlier, I'm a character guy, and this movie has some of the most interesting characters in any movie. Toretto is interesting and Vin Diesel, who I'm not a huge fan of but have liked him as Groot in the MCU, plays him pretty well, but my favourite characters are Brian and Mia. Brian is a cop but he's getting crap from his bosses for not wrapping up the case quickly and for being wrong about Johnny Tran, played by Rick Yune, who was in the 2002 James Bond film, Die Another Day, being the one hijacking the trucks. Between that and falling in love with Mia, Brian isn't so sure that what he's doing is right. Except it's much more complicated than that simply because Brian spends alot of time with Toretto and his crew. There's a scene fairly early on in the movie where Toretto and his crew, including his girlfriend, Letty, played by Michelle Rodriguez, and Brian, get together at Dom and Mia's house for a barbecue and movie night. It's a quiet moment and it's the kind of moment that I love in movies like this, because it helps to center the movie and gives me a touchstone when all the insane parts, that wouldn't necessarily happen in real life, start happening. This is where you kind of start to see Brian doubt what he's doing there, because he sees these supposed criminals as people, who are a family and would do anything for each other. And yet, that's not what this movie is about. The theme is family, but the movie is not about family. It's about Brian and his undercover assignment and him being seduced by the dark side so to speak. 

Because of this scene it's not surprising that Brian lets Dominic escape at the end of the movie. At the same time though, there was no guarantee that that was where the movie was heading for. Even up until the very last minute, Brian fully intended to arrest Toretto even if the rest of his crew had disappeared, with Mia being the only one still at the house as Brian's arrival and Tran killing Jesse interrupted their departure. And it was Tran killing Jesse that turned Brian onto Dominic's side as he helps him deal with Tran and his henchman. Even after Toretto wrecked his car getting hit by a semi-truck, Brian was done and let him take his own car, the one he'd owed Dominic the whole movie. 

But besides the characters, I think what drew me into this movie is that even though I've never seen it until last night, I was nostalgic for the time period it came out in and was set in. I was 14 going on 15 when this movie came out and I remember 2001. I started high school that year, and had two operations that started me on the path to being able to walk again and eventually to eat actual food instead of just a formula through a feeding tube. I watched shows like The O.C., Degrassi: The Next Generation, and One Tree Hill, where the style of clothes are exactly how they are in this movie. Especially on The O.C. since both that show and this movie are set in southern California and so the clothing would be slightly different than it would be elsewhere in the United States and Canada. And while I'm not fond of the style of music used in this movie, seeing early 2000s computers and cell phones was wild. Especially since my family still had the larger brick style cell phone in 2001.

Do I think this movie is the best movie ever? No, absolutely not. Did I enjoy watching it and would I watch it again? Definitely. It was fun to put on a mindless action movie, that didn't have a lot of action in it, for a couple of hours before bed. Especially one where I didn't know what the outcome would actually be, unlike the recent slew of comic book movies which have become almost predictable because they follow that same formula, even if they're ones that try not to follow that formula. Which isn't a bad thing at all, it's just refreshing to watch a movie where you don't really know who the good guys and bad guys are, and whether the good guys or the bad guys will win in the end. 

And that my friends is it for me for today. I will be back next week for my review of the next movie in the Fast and Furious series, 2 Fast 2 Furious, which came out in 2003. I also have other posts coming out this week too. So stay tuned for those. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.   

Star Wars Insider #43 (1999) Magazine Review

 Hey everyone! Happy Friday! Kind of. It's super cold out today, so it might not be such a happy Friday for those of you who have to be out in it. Today I'm going to be taking a look at Star Wars Insider issue 43, which is the first issue of the magazine that I ever got, all the way back in 1999. I call it a review, but it really isn't, it's more like an overview because it's a magazine so I don't have story or characters to talk about. So let's get into it.

This issue is the last one to come out before The Phantom Menace came out in May, 1999, before the magazine would have a four issue complete coverage of the new movie, including interviews with some of the film's principal cast. I don't remember where my mom got this issue for me, but, it makes sense that she did, because not only do I love Star Wars, but it had been two years since the Special Editions had come out, Bantam Spectra was wrapping up their line of Star Wars novels after nine years, and the hype surrounding the first new Star Wars movie in 16 years was massive so Star Wars was everywhere.

One of the reasons I like to collect and read these older issues of the magazine is because it's a window into where Star Wars was as a franchise at this point in time, and what the fandom was like too. The internet had just become popular though not everybody had the internet back then. Social media still about a decade away from becoming a thing, so for alot of people growing up, our fandom was limited to our friends in our neighbourhood and at school. For me it was me and my buddies, Garrett and Meagan and that's pretty much it. Garrett had been a Star Wars fan much longer than either Meagan or I had been at that point, as I'd first saw the movies in late 1995/early 1996 when my dad got the 1995, "One Last Time..." VHS boxset of all three movies, and I think Meagan got into it with the Special Editions. I know she didn't see them in theatres, as she'd just seen them when we got back to school after Christmas, around the time I also first started getting into the Animorphs series.

From 1994 when the magazine changed it's name from Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine to Star Wars Insider, to 2005 just after Revenge of the Sith came out, the magazine had a section called "Prequel Update". This was where Fan Club President, Dan Madsen, spoke to Executive Producer, Rick McCallum, about the production of the prequel movies as well as about other stuff going on in terms of Lucasfilm, including the first rumours of a new Indiana Jones movie being in the works, which would end up being true though the movie itself wouldn't come out until 2008, and celebrating the re-release of the Indiana Jones movies on VHS, alongside episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles in issue #46.

In this particular issue, "Prequel Update" was just pictures of the main and secondary characters from the new movie, including names, what role they play in the movie, and the actors who play them. Although, oddly enough the CGI characters including Jar Jar Binks and Watto, don't have actors's names attached. Neither do R2-D2 and C-3PO, even though it was long established at this point that Anthony Daniels played 3PO and Kenny Baker played R2. I think in the case of Jar Jar and Watto, there hadn't been interviews with Ahmed Best (Jar Jar) and Andy Secombe (Watto), and because the movie hadn't come out yet when the pictures were put into the magazine, they didn't want to spoil anything, so they kept it a secret until Ahmed Best's interview in #46.

Back then there was a section called "Star News" which is where cast announcements, cast sightings, release dates, and news on toys, comic books, and novels were put. In this issue, along with the final worldwide release dates for The Phantom Menace being announced, "Star News" had an article that announced the release of The New Jedi Order and that R.A. Salvatore was writing the first book, which would later become Vector Prime. I don't know for sure but I think the novel license moving from Bantam back to Del Rey had already been announced in an earlier issue of the magazine due to the fact that the novelization of The Phantom Menace had been published by Del Rey in April 1999, though Bantam still had three books, The Bounty Hunter Wars: Hard Merchandise, X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar, and Tales of the New Republic, on the publication schedule before Del Rey took over completely. Issue #44 would be the debut of their book section, which hadn't been a thing prior to that, despite the comics getting a section devoted to them. 

There are other articles in this issue, such as profiles on all the people who had been working at Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic since production on Star Wars began in 1976, "Prequel Profile" which shined a light on one person working on Episode I, and an article on a Star Wars: The Customizable Card Game tournament being held in Virginia Beach, as part of Decipher's third annual World Championships in November 1998. But "Prequel Update" and "Star News" were the sections I wanted to highlight in this blog post because those are the two sections that best highlight where Star Wars was as a franchise back in 1999.

 While the cover I used for the cover image for this post is the newsstand edition, there were two other covers as well. The first was the subscribers cover, which had Darth Maul in the foreground and Qui-Gon Jinn in the orange background, with a purple Star Wars Insider logo. The third was this one that you see above. It's the Previews Exclusive, which is the one my mom got for me, as I remember Darth Maul being in the foreground, but with the gold Insider logo, with the "Previews Exclusive" stamp right below it. Though I can't confirm it because I lost the front and back covers for my copy of this issue about 23 years ago or so. But like I said, the image above is what I remember the cover of my copy being since I wasn't a subscriber and I know I didn't have the newsstand edition cover. What I find interesting is that the title on the cover says "Revenge of the Sith" simply because that would be the name that George Lucas would give Episode III in either 2004 or very early in 2005. 

I think that's going to be it for me for this week, as well as for this post. I just wanted to go through this issue of Star Wars Insider since it was the very first issue I ever had of the magazine, and I collected it for 21 years before deciding to stop doing so regularly. I'll be back next week with more reviews and posts. Including my review of the 2001 film, The Fast & the Furious. I was requested to review this franchise since I have all of the movies on DVD and Blu-ray and I've never seen any of them. So we'll see what I think of each movie as I go through them. I'll also have comic book reviews, and in two weeks I'll be reviewing the season 3 premiere of Star Trek: Picard. I'm hoping it's good, but given how bad season 2 was, and how much I didn't like in season 1, I do not have high hopes for season 3, despite the entire TNG cast, aside from Wil Wheaton and Denise Crosby, returning for this final season of the show. So we'll see. Until then have a good weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care, and stay warm!