Making It So (2023) Book Discussion

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing well. I had planned on doing this post yesterday, but I got distracted with stuff, so here I am. I'm here to talk about Sir Patrick Stewart's new memoir, Making It So. It's not a review, because how do you review how someone tells their life story in a book? Instead, I'm just going to talk about the book and whether I recommend it or not. So let's get into it.

Sir Patrick Stewart, the man who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard for ten seasons of television (7 seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation and 3 seasons of Star Trek: Picard) and four movies, and Professor Charles Xavier in six X-Men movies and one MCU movie, is one of the first actors I ever saw on screen. The others being the rest of the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. As a result Sir Patrick is someone I've followed the career of my whole life. As you know, I'm not much into celebrities or celebrity watching or anything like that, I don't own alot of biographies or autobiographies, and it's not something I'm generally into. But, when I saw that Sir Patrick was doing a memoir and it was being published this year, I decided that, this is one that I wanted to own. 

Despite him being well known for Star Trek and the X-Men movies, he doesn't actually spend that much time talking about his time on either franchise, preferring to spend more time talking about his life as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company in England and the various plays he performed in, as well as his personal life, such as friendships, family, and romantic relationships than on his work.

I've heard someone say that the book felt like just a bunch of name drops, with nothing exciting happening. That's what I love about it. Movies and TV shows, specifically the discussion surrounding movies and TV shows, have made being an actor or actress this glamourous thing, especially when someone is as famous as Sir Patrick is. But, alot of the time actors have lives just like ours. Sure, they may have more money than we could ever imagine, and live in bigger houses than most of us could ever afford to live in, but, their lives aren't anymore exciting than yours or mine are. It's just they tend to run into tons more celebrities than we would, because the performing arts industry is pretty small. Especially if you spend most of your time in L.A. or Stratford or wherever you spend your time working. 

One of my favourite lines comes during Sir Patrick's time on Star Trek. He's talking about how he's managed to remain humble while his star was on the rise in Hollywood thanks to him playing Picard and then he says, "Stop laughing Jonathan", meaning Jonathan Frakes, who, naturally, would be laughing at Sir Patrick for saying such a thing with a straight face. Not only is that a scene I can imagine those two having, but it reminds me of season 3 of Picard, where he forgot that he no longer needs to call down to Engineering to inform them of what warp they'll be going to on the newest starships, and after Seven of Nine reminds him of this he says, "Oh yes, of course", and Riker says, "Nice recovery Admiral." to which Jean-Luc replies, "Shut it Will.".

Also, I was intrigued to know that Sir Ian McKellen actually tried to dissuade Sir Patrick from taking the role of Picard on TNG, believing that Sir Patrick had a much better career in the Royal Shakespeare Company than he did on television. Keep in mind that Sirs Patrick and Ian were not close friends yet as that would not happen until they started working together on the X-Men movies in the late '90s and early 2000s, and because of this, Sir Patrick decided to accept the role of Picard, believing that Sir Ian was wrong. So you have Gandalf to thank for Sir Patrick deciding to accept the role on Star Trek.

If you're a fan of Sir Patrick Stewart and his work, then I highly recommend picking up this book, even if you're not heavily into biographies or autobiographies. Because he wrote it, it feels like he's saying the words on the page as if he were on the radio or standing right in front of you. Right now the book is in hardcover and there's an audiobook version as well, which is narrated by Sir Patrick himself. So definitely pick it up if you have the chance.

Alright my friends, I think that's going to be it for me for 2023. I am taking next week and the week after off for Christmas and New Year's and then I'll be back for more reviews and other posts. So until then have a great last week of the year, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, and I will see you all in 2024. Take care.

Movies I Saw in Theatres Part 3: 2010-2019

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing okay. Back in January 2022 I started a three part series on the movies that I've seen in theatres over the years. I never got around to doing part 3 because other posts and reviews got in the way and I lost interest in talking about the movies I was going to be talking about in the final post. So that's what I'll be doing today. A quick note before I start though. These are only the movies that I went to the theatre to see. I saw many other movies on Netflix, on DVD, and on other digital platforms. So there will be a few major blockbusters that came out in the 2010s that I just never got around to seeing in theatres, but did eventually see. Let's get into it.

The first movie I saw in theatres in 2010 was Iron Man 2. By this time I was approaching my mid-20s and had just finished my final semester of college, so I had alot more time on my hands, since I wasn't going to be working due to my disabilities. Brad and I went to see this together, and this would be the first of many movies that I'd see with him in theatres in the 2010s. At the time I had no idea who anyone was besides Tony, Pepper and Happy since they'd been in the 2008 movie, and I really hadn't read any Marvel outside of some Spider-Man comics, and the then complete run of The Runaways. Plus Don Cheadle had replaced Terrence Howard as Rhodey, so I didn't recognize him at first either. I think an Avengers movie had been announced by this point, but the MCU wasn't a sure thing yet and geek culture as a whole hadn't overcome pop culture quite yet.

The next movie I saw in theatres was Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Brad and I went together, but, this time we were joined by Claire, we'd known in high school and whom I'd been very close to during my early high school years. I had no idea that the movie was based on a comic book series, but I knew Michael Cera, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, being that Cera had been in several movies that I'd seen trailers for such as Superbad, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead had played Gwen Grayson/Royal Pain in Sky High. We all enjoyed the movie, and over the next couple of years I was given all six volumes of the comic. I also bought the movie on DVD when it came out.

The last movie I saw in theatres in 2010 was Walt Disney Animation Studios's 50th animated feature film, Tangled starring the voices of Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi. It was also the first animated Disney movie I'd seen in theatres since Mulan had come out in 1998. Brad and I went on New Year's Eve before he was supposed to go over to his girlfriend's place for the night, and I went home to spend the rest of the evening with my parents and siblings. 

The first movie I saw in theatres in 2011 was Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Being that I'd seen the first two Transformers movies in theatres in 2007 and 2009 respectively, it made sense for Brad and I to go see the third movie in theatres as well. This was my first time seeing Alan Tudyk in anything outside of the shortlived Sci-Fi TV show, Firefly and its follow up movie, Serenity. I remember liking it, but Megan Fox wasn't in this one and honestly, I felt like Paramount was really spinning its wheels with this movie. Transformers is a concept that works for toys, comics, and TV shows, but movies aren't the best medium for the franchise, which is why I haven't seen any of the Transformers movies that came out after this one. I think by this point I had already gotten season 1 of the original '80s cartoon on DVD and had actually watched through the whole season, so I was a bit more critical of the live-action movies than I was when the first one came out in 2007.

Next I saw Real Steel starring Hugh Jackman, who I'd only seen as Wolverine in the X-Men movies at this point. It was good, but I only ever saw it the one time and I think Brad and I only saw it because Hugh Jackman was in it.

The third movie I saw in theatres in 2011 was the period piece, Anonymous, which was about whether someone else actually wrote Shakespeare's plays for him or not. I'm not really into Shakespeare, despite the fact that I was the best reader in my class in high school when we did Shakespeare plays in English class. And ordinarily this isn't a movie I would've seen. However, the family of a friend I had at the time, whom I'd known since 1999, when I started middle school in grade 7, had tickets for a special preview showing of the movie and they invited me to go with them so I accepted the invitation. I remember not really being into it, but it was a fun night out. I knew who Roland Emmerich was as by 2011 I'd seen Stargate, Independence Day, and Godzilla (1998), but I wasn't, and am still not, a big fan of his, and I didn't give this movie much thought after I saw it either. Apparently nobody else did either because it bombed at the box office, earning $15.4 million of its $30 million budget, and I haven't heard anything about it since then.

The final movie I saw in theatres in 2011 was The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1. So I started seeing a woman I'd known since kindergarten and we happened to cross paths online a few months earlier. I hadn't seen her since Teens First Summer Camp back in the summer of 1998, and we met up a few times. She even came to my birthday party at Kelly's that year. So anyway, we decided to go see this movie together on my birthday for our first date. Unfortunately, while the date went very well and we had a great time, our relationship didn't go forward because I ended up needing surgery to have my gall bladder removed, and it had to be done the old fashioned way so I was supposed to take two months to recover from the operation (I took two weeks). And because she's in a wheelchair, she couldn't come over to my place to see me as the house my parents and I were living in at the time wasn't set up for wheelchairs, which is why mine stayed in the garage, and THEN she got diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer and ended up needing surgery herself. After that we just went our separate ways and I haven't seen her since then. I knew nothing about Twilight or Stephenie Meyer before I saw this movie. I ended up reading all the books because my potential girlfriend loved them and it was something for us to talk about since she wasn't into any of the stuff that I'm into. She'd also given me a box set of the Hunger Games Trilogy for my birthday that year since the first movie was due to come out in 2012. 

The first movie I saw in theatres in 2012 ended up being two movies. Brad and I went to see The Amazing Spider-Man and as we were getting out of our seats when the movie was over, I mentioned that I hadn't seen The Avengers being that I hadn't seen a Marvel movie since Iron Man 2 in 2010. So Brad and I left the theatre to go have dinner and after that we went back and saw The Avengers. It was my very first double feature. Of course I hadn't seen Thor or Captain America: The First Avenger the previous year. Though, unlike nowadays, you didn't necessarily need to have seen any of the previous movies in the MCU to enjoy The Avengers. Again, the success of the MCU as a whole was not a guarantee at this point though The Avengers went a long way to changing that. 

The next movie I saw was The Bourne Legacy. Again, it wasn't normally a movie I would've seen, but I'd liked Jeremy Renner in The Avengers and my grandparents were taking me to the movies, which isn't something they'd done since Grandma and I went to see Mr. Deeds in 2002. Of course, I had never seen any of the Bourne movies but I still enjoyed this one. This was the last movie I saw in theatres in 2012 as well. Again, the comic book/superhero movie was just starting to take off, so not alot came out in 2012 in that regard. Nor did anything else come out that I really wanted to see in theatres. I ended up seeing The Dark Knight Rises on DVD when my brother got it for me for my birthday.

The first movie I saw in 2013 was Star Trek Into Darkness. Of course, I went to see it with Brad, but we also went with two friends of mine, Lauren and Chelsey. I have mixed feelings about the Kelvin timeline movies (Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond). On the one hand they improved on the problems that I have with the original Star Trek TV series and gave characters like Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov more to do. On the other hand, it turned Star Trek into Star Wars. Into Darkness, which I'll be reviewing at some point, basically tried to copy Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but did it worse, and tried to make Khan a sympathetic character, which he's not supposed to be.

Man of Steel was the next movie I saw. This time I went with my siblings before my sister went to teach in China for two years and my brother went off to London, Ontario to do his Doctorate. I wasn't a big fan of Superman when I saw this movie, and even now I still prefer Batman, being that I grew up with Batman. At this point I'd seen the first five seasons of Smallville as they aired, remembered watching Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman with my parents when I was a kid in the '90s, had seen Superman Returns starring Brandon Routh, and had seen bits and pieces of the four Christopher Reeve Superman movies, but hadn't spent any real time with any version of the character except for Smallville. I liked the movie when I saw it, but I only watched it twice more, once I got it on DVD about a year later. This was my first exposure to the work of Zack Snyder as I'd yet to see Watchmen and wasn't interested in his other work.

Next was Thor: The Dark World, which was the only MCU movie to come out in 2013 besides Iron Man 3. It was an okay movie. Of the original Avengers, I like the Thor movies the least. The first one was great, but the rest are meh for me. To the point that I haven't watched Love & Thunder yet.

The last movie I saw in 2013 and the first one I saw in 2014 was Disney's Frozen. This movie was everywhere! Brad and I went to see it for my birthday in December 2013, and then, I saw it a second time in January 2014, literally a month later. The second time though I went to see it with the girl I was seeing at the time as our second date/the date when I got to meet her parents for the first time. Unlike my previous attempt to date, things didn't end poorly. We're still very close friends, we just chose not to be together romantically. And, no, it wasn't because of this movie either. 

2014 was actually a pretty big year for me when it came to seeing movies in the theatre. So much came out as comic book based movies started to grow in popularity thanks to the MCU, and the promises that Warner Bros. was making about the DC Extended Universe (basically the DC version of the MCU) at the time (boy have things not changed at all in ten years). First up was The Lego Movie. I saw this one with my dad, our minister at the time, and the minister's son. Like Frozen, which was still playing in theatres, The Lego Movie was everywhere in early 2014.

Next was Mr. Peabody & Sherman, which was based on a segment from the 1960s cartoon The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, which ran from 1959 until 1964, and then was on reruns throughout the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Once again, Brad and I went to see this one and he had no idea who they were because he'd never seen Rocky and Bullwinkle before. Which ended with me explaining to him who Mr. Peabody and Sherman came from and how I knew of them. Aside from a Netflix series based on the movie, which I had no idea existed until just now, as I'm writing this post, nothing came of this movie as it flopped at the box office.

So Captain America: The Winter Soldier was an interesting viewing experience for me. I went to see it with Brad, and our friend, Matt, which was standard fair for us at the time. But, what made this experience interesting is that the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was airing on ABC in the U.S. and CTV here in Canada, and I happened to see the movie the day the tie-in episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. aired. In fact I got home from the movie just in time to watch the episode. Of course, this would be the last time the Marvel TV shows would have anything to do with the MCU movies until the Disney+ era started a few years ago.

Next was Godzilla. Despite being a fan of Power Rangers and Super Sentai, I'm not a big Kaiju (Japanese monster) fan. I also had never seen the past movies. I remember seeing the commercials for 1998 Godzilla movie, and I remember catching one of the old black and white ones on TV sometime in the 2000s, though I can't remember which one, and I caught it when I turned the TV on one Sunday afternoon randomly and there was only about 20 minutes left in the movie. So I surprised myself and Brad when I asked him if we could go see Godzilla.

Right after that Brad and I went to see The Amazing Spider-Man 2. We saw it on Saturday, May 3rd, after we'd been to the comic book store for Free Comic Book Day, a week before the 2014 edition of Ottawa Comiccon, which we also went to together. By this time I'd read a ton more Spider-Man comics and was well aware of the history of characters like Gwen Stacey. Plus, I knew of villains like the Green Goblin, Electro, and the Rhino from the '90s animated series and the Sam Raimi movie trilogy.

Guardians of the Galaxy came out next, though I don't remember if I saw it right away or if I waited a bit. I remember seeing it with my dad, and my brother and sister, but I don't remember how long after it came out that we waited to see it. It wasn't super long because my brother and sister were going back to school and we only had a short time before they left, so it was definitely sometime in August that we went.

 Either sometime before that or after that, my friend Kelly and I went to see the new Ninja Turtles movie. We'd tried to go see the 2007 animated movie, TMNT when that was in theatres, but the timing didn't work out with her working and me getting ready to start college, so when we found out that a new live action movie called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was going to come out, we decided we were gonna go see it as soon as it came out. We enjoyed it, though it would be like two years before I got it on DVD, and even then I don't think I watched it again after Kelly and I saw it in theatres.

Next was a Canadian film known as The F Word, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Zoe Kazan, and Adam Driver (pre-Star Wars Adam Driver I might add). I saw this with my friend, Katie. This is actually the only movie I've actually seen Daniel Radcliffe in outside of the Harry Potter movies of course. And actually, that's why I wanted to see this movie in the first place. The movie was known as What If? in the U.S. and other countries. Despite having bought it digitally, on iTunes, I haven't watched it since the theatre in 2014.

To finish off 2014, Brad and I went to see Big Hero 6 for my birthday. Naturally, despite Marvel becoming popular thanks to the MCU, Big Hero 6 came out only a year after Frozen and it did well, but I don't know alot of people who saw it. Compared to Frozen anyway. It was a good movie.

Starting off the year, Brad and I went to see Tomorrowland. I really enjoyed it. Though Brad Bird and Disney went way too overboard on the Star Wars product placement in this movie. I get it. The Sequel Trilogy was about to debut with The Force Awakens at the end of the year, but still, this movie has nothing to do with Star Wars. Even as a fan of Star Wars, it was off-putting to me.

In June I saw Inside Out. I went with my girlfriend at the time, and really enjoyed it. However, the experience after the movie wasn't great. This ended up being my last date with my girlfriend, as she broke up with me in the car on the way back to my place. By the way, this was a different girlfriend than the one I went to see Frozen with in early 2014. The movie was so good though.

Brad and I did another double feature. This time we saw Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man. Unlike three years earlier, we didn't go on Free Comic Book Day since Ant-Man didn't come out until July. The only reason we did a double feature is because we'd done one with the first Avengers movie in 2012, and since these were two MCU films instead of an MCU movie and a Spider-Man movie, we decided it'd be a good fit.

Then we saw The Martian starring Matt Damon. It was good and I ended up reading the book afterward, but, normally this isn't the kind of movie I'd usually pick to see. I think Brad and I saw it because nothing else was out at this time that we already hadn't seen or were interested in seeing if we hadn't yet but we still wanted to go to the movies.

Then, to wrap up the year, we went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the first live action Star Wars movie to come out in theatres since Revenge of the Sith came out in 2005, and the first live action Star Wars movie I saw in theatres since The Phantom Menace in 1999. I saw The Clone Wars in 2008 of course, but, that should've been a TV movie not a theatrical release. The hype surrounding this movie was incredible and something I hadn't seen for a Star Wars movie since 1999. Because there hadn't been a big budget Star Wars movie in theatres in ten years up to that point and we weren't supposed to be getting one since George Lucas was done with Star Wars movies after the prequels.

2016 did not start off very well. I was in and out of the hospital with abdominal problems, my parents were trying to sell our house, and everything was up in the air. However, my dad, sister, and I went to see Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in theatres once my sister was home from China. I enjoyed it while I was watching it on the big screen since it was the first time we got to see Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman team up in a live action movie (the animated shows did it all the time in the late '90s and early to mid 2000s). But the more I got away from that viewing, the more I began to dislike it. It's a bad movie. Snyder and Warner Bros. had no idea what they were doing. They just knew that Marvel and Disney was beating them with the MCU. Mainly because the MCU got started alot sooner than the DCEU did, but also because the DCEU immediately lost momentum by putting out Man of Steel in 2013, but then not putting anything else out until this movie came out three years later, and then followed it with Suicide Squad five months later. Between this and seeing Watchmen on DVD a year before, made me not impressed with Zack Snyder as a director.

Then a month later, Brad and I saw The Boss starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Bell, and Peter Dinklage. It was a stupid movie, but I needed stupid fun after sitting through Batman v Superman. 

Right after that was Captain America: Civil War. While I'm not a big fan of the comic this movie is based on, the best part of this movie for me was seeing Spider-Man interacting with the rest of the Marvel heroes on the big screen for the first time, and getting to meet Black Panther for the first time, played by the late Chadwick Boseman.

After that was Star Trek Beyond. My parents and I had just moved to the house we're in now, and I hadn't been out with Brad much, if at all, since we'd been busy packing everything up, moving, and getting settled into our new house. So, Brad took me to see the movie with a friend of his. This is honestly my favourite of the Kelvin timeline Star Trek movies, and is the best of the three. 

And then we went to see Batman: The Killing Joke on the same day as Star Trek Beyond came out, but it was August by the time I got the chance to see Beyond. This was a special limited event and Brad and I went with a pretty big group of friends. It wasn't a good movie, but it was fun having Kevin Conroy back voicing Batman and Mark Hamill voicing the Joker again given they were the ones voicing those characters on TV throughout my childhood. 

My sister and I went to see Doctor Strange around Christmastime. She loved it, but I found it too bizarre and disorienting. Plus, I'm not a fan of Benedict Cumberbatch, so that didn't thrill me either. It was a decent movie, but definitely not my favourite MCU film.

Brad and I ended up going to see Rogue One on opening night. In fact, I'm pretty sure we were there for the first showing of the movie. Which was cool. However, unlike the year before with The Force Awakens, there was very little hype for this movie, and for the first showing on opening night, our theatre was nowhere near packed. The movie wasn't bad, it just didn't feel like a Star Wars movie.

At the beginning of 2017 I was getting sicker. I hadn't been in the hospital with abdominal issues in nearly a year, but, I was getting sicker. However, my dad and I went to see The Lego Batman Movie with a buddy of his from work. It was so much fun. and I really enjoyed it.

After that, a big group of friends and I, including Brad, went to see the live action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, starring Emma Watson as Belle. I enjoyed it. I'd started blogging two years earlier so by this time movie reviews were a regular feature on the blog, which was on Word Press at the time.

The very next weekend I went with another group of friends, and my sister, to see Power Rangers. I loved the movie and thought it was extremely well done, even if nobody else thought so, given that it completely flopped at the box office. Which is understandable given that it was a Power Rangers movie coming out in 2017. This was the last movie I saw in theatres for a long time because the day after I saw this movie, I became deathly ill and ended up having emergency surgery on my gut a week later.

I was lucky that Wonder Woman was still in theatres by the time I'd recovered from my abdominal surgery enough to start going out with Brad again, because that's the first movie he took me to see when I was feeling better. It was a fun movie and probably the best DCEU film. However, the sound cut out during the final act, so I missed a couple of seconds of dialogue from the bad guys. Brad told me what it was afterward since he'd already seen the movie with his girlfriend before he took me to see it.

Shortly after that, Brad and I went to see Spider-Man: Homecoming. Even though I was starting to get burned out on the MCU, being that, outside of Spider-Man, I'm not a big Marvel fan, I was all in for this version of Spider-Man. Tom Holland played an excellent Peter Parker, and a fantastic Spider-Man. The only thing I didn't like about this movie is that there was too much Iron Man in it. Don't get me wrong, I loved Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man, but, in the comics, Spider-Man didn't have this relationship with Iron Man until Civil War. In this movie Peter is still only about a year into his career as Spider-Man, so that makes it weird. And that's honestly the only time you'll ever hear me say that about a movie based on a comic book, or a movie adapted from another medium for that matter.

Like we had the year before with Rogue One, Brad and I went to see The Last Jedi on opening night, though this time we went to the second showing, rather than the first. We both enjoyed it and we were completely unaware of the backlash the movie was getting on social media. I didn't have a Twitter account in 2017, but I was on YouTube and oh man did this movie ever get it bad in the weeks following its debut. 

2018 started out with my sister and I going to see Peter Rabbit. My siblings and I grew up reading all of the Beatrix Potter stories about Tom Kitten, Jemima Puddleduck, Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, and all the others, so when we heard this movie was coming out, my sister and I immediately made plans to go see it. 

Again, even though I was starting to be burned out on the MCU, Black Panther was the shot of fresh air that I needed to get me to the two part Avengers finale we were about to experience. I loved every minute of it, though I'm sad that Chadwick Boseman didn't live long enough to star in the sequel, Wakanda Forever.

Brad and I went to see the Steven Spielberg directed adaptation of Ernest Cline's 2011 novel, Ready Player One. As you know from my reviews of both the movie and the novel, I like the book, but the movie makes it better. It was also the first Spielberg movie I ever saw in theatres, which is cool, considering the movie version of the story is an homage to Spielberg and his generation of filmmakers.

Then it happened. The event that was Avengers: Infinity War came out and Brad and I were right there along with the rest of the world. I had read The Infinity Gauntlet a few years earlier, but even that didn't prepare me for what I saw on screen. The most startling realization for me was that, Thanos was right. The way he handled everything might not have been the best, but his reasoning for doing such things was disturbingly right. Out of all of the MCU movies we'd had up to this point, Infinity War was the most emotionally difficult one we got, from the opening scene with Thor, Loki, and the survivors of Asgaard to the final scene where everyone turns to dust and vanishes. 

The next movie I saw after Infinity War, was Ant-Man and the Wasp. I had enjoyed Ant-Man when I'd seen it in 2015, but the sequel wasn't just up to par with its predecessor, but it also didn't hold up to Infinity War either. Even when Scott Lang disappeared into the Quantum Realm, and everybody else vanished because Thanos snapped his finger.

Christopher Robin was a completely different story. Of course, my siblings and I grew up with Winnie the Pooh. Both the Disney version, and the original books by A.A. Milne. So my sister and I made plans to go see this movie. Especially because Obi-Wan Kenobi himself, Ewan MacGregor, was cast as Christopher Robin, Agent Carter herself, Hayley Atwell, was cast as his wife, and Jim Cummings, surrounded by a new cast, returned to voice both Pooh and Tigger. I loved it.

Before they went to Florida, Grandma took me to see an animated movie called Smallfoot, about a Yeti looking for the ever elusive "Smallfoot" i.e. a human. One of us. That was alot of fun. Of course, Grandma did this as an early birthday/Christmas present, going back to when I was growing up and she'd take me to the movies since she couldn't take me out for dinner like she could the rest of my family. 

The first movie I saw in 2019 was one that came out in December, 2018. That movie was Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Brad and I went to see it of course, and I loved it. Haven't seen the sequel though.

Next we saw Captain Marvel. Despite the '90s aesthetic of the movie, and Brie Larsen's incredible performance, I couldn't connect to the movie the way I did the previous MCU movies. Because I'm not a Marvel fan, had never read any Captain Marvel comics, and knew almost nothing about the character, I couldn't connect to the character, because as she was written in the script, Carol Danvers couldn't connect with herself, and as a result she couldn't connect to the rest of the characters around her. Also the Marvel cosmic stuff is extremely complicated and hard to be introduced to in a single movie like this. While we'd had two Guardians of the Galaxy movies they didn't exactly do a good job of really introducing the cosmic stuff outside of what James Gunn felt pertained to the Guardians, and the larger story these movies were moving towards. It did its best, but it had to wrap up Carol's backstory so she could show up in Endgame, which was only a few months away from coming out.

Later on, Brad and I saw the OTHER Captain Marvel, i.e. Shazam!. This time we surprised our friend, Jonathan, in his hometown and we spent the day together, culminating in seeing this movie. This is also the day that my VHS collection started becoming a thing. So it was a big day for all of us. We really enjoyed the movie though it didn't become the breakout hit that the DCEU needed to get on track after it had lost its way with Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad back in 2016. 

The very next movie that I saw in theatres, I also saw with Brad, was Avengers: Endgame. The culmination of everything the MCU had aimed for in the 11 years since Iron Man first hit the box office all the way back in 2008. I loved it. Especially that moment when Doctor Strange's portals open, every character we'd been introduced to up this moment showed up and Cap says, "Avengers! Assemble!" and the heroes ran into battle. By the end of this movie, I was done. The boost that Black Panther had given me the year before had been spent on Infinity War, Captain Marvel, and Endgame, so I knew I'd bow out and let the younger generation enjoy these movies, with Spider-Man being the exception since it seemed like the MCU was keeping him around a little while longer it seemed. 

After that, Katie and I went to see Aladdin together, just the two of us. While Disney had been getting hit for these live action remakes of their classic animated movies, I found myself enjoying this one alot. Even though Will Smith could never truly replace Robin Williams as the Genie.

And then came Spider-Man: Far From Home, which worked as a great epilogue to Endgame. It also gave us a great cliffhanger that we had to wait two years to see the conclusion of. Though, because of the pandemic I had to wait three years to see the conclusion of, because I had to wait until it came out on Blu-ray to see it. Also, by this time going to the movies had gotten pretty expensive in the decade since Brad and I had started going together regularly. As a result, I didn't see as many movies as I had in previous years. Plus, not as much was coming out that I was interested in seeing theatrically. 

In October, 2019, Grandma and Grandpa took my sister and I to see The Addams Family before they went to Florida for the winter. Of course I'd grown up watching various versions of the Addams Family, including the live action movies, various animated incarnations, and the live action TV series, The New Addams Family, so I was excited to see this movie. I really enjoyed it. Plus any chance to go see a movie with my grandparents was great. 

To wrap up 2019 Brad, my sister, and I went to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. By this point Disney+ had debuted with season 1 of The Mandalorian and other shows and movies and I was enjoying it. However, I was still really nervous about this movie because of how much backlash The Last Jedi had gotten two years earlier, and how little fanfare Solo: A Star Wars Story received when it came out only a year and a half earlier. And to the surprise of no-one, this movie got hit hard with backlash too. I still liked it though. 

As it turned out The Rise of Skywalker would be the last movie I would see in theatres, and that was four years ago. As mentioned in the first two parts of this series, going to the movies wasn't something I did on a regular basis when I was a kid. But, it became a pretty regular thing in my twenties and the first half of my thirties, because not only did I have my own money, but I had friends who liked some of the same stuff that I did and going to the movies was a way to make the best memories. Especially with the amount of movies Brad and I saw together from 2008 until 2019. And of all the MCU movies I saw in theatres during that time, minus two that came out while I was in the hospital in 2017, Doctor Strange was the only one I saw without him. 

Alright my friends, that's gonna be it for me for today. I'll be back on Friday for my last blog post of 2023. So until then have a great night and I will talk to you all later. Take care.