Films and TV (Untagged spoilers)

[Dragaros]

"First look at Indiana Jones 5. The film is slated to hit theaters on June 30, 2023."

[Dragaros]

"Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, an Original series starring Jude Law, from executive producers Jon Watts, Christopher Ford, Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, is streaming in 2023 only on Disney+."

[Dragaros]

"Season 3 of The Mandalorian will premiere on Disney+ in February 2023."

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5UX1Adanis

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbbveDpUZv4

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaGVjw9AwPE

[Dragaros]

"A live-action TV adaptation of Speed Racer from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot and Warner Bros. Television is in the works for Apple TV+. Hiram Martinez (Snowpiercer, Get Shorty) and Ron Fitzgerald (Westworld) are both set to write the project and serve as showrunner. Abrams and his Bad Robot banner are set to exec produce."

"A TV adaptation of Horizon Zero Dawn is in early development at Netflix. There was no mention of whether it will be live-action or animated."

"Stargate writer, producer and director Robert C. Cooper is set to showrun Generation Mars, a sci-fi series adapted from Douglas D. Meredith’s book series."

"Austin Butler has confirmed that he has officially signed on to star opposite Oscar nominee Timothée Chalamet in the forthcoming Dune: Part Two. Butler revealed that he already started his knife-fight training for the antagonistic role of Feyd-Rautha. The character was famously portrayed by Sting in David Lynch’s 1984 film."
"A film adaptation of Gran Turismo directed by Neill Blomkamp is in the works at Sony Pictures and PlayStation Productions."

"A TV adaptation of Gran Turismo is in early development. No streamer or network was mentioned."

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjZff_wTad8

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIeCzBCLJww

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k09Y4mCARYY

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ1vN_91KO0

[Dragaros]

"Natasha Liu Bordizzo has officially been cast as Sabine Wren in Ahsoka. First look at live-action C1-10P, commonly known as “Chopper,” in Ahsoka."

[Dragaros]

Read a few rumors that Universal wants to try to make a cinematic universe with their classic monster IPs yet again. Probably BS, but just for the record:

► Show Spoiler

-Plan is to start things off with a Van Helsing movie.
-Van Helsing's family is killed by Dracula and his brides, which begins his life-long obsession with studying and hunting monsters.
-Dracula is not the main villain, he's being saved as the ultimate big bad for the series' finale. Elizabeth Báthory, raised from the dead as a vampire, is the villain of the film. Helena Bonham Carter is supposedly being eyed for the role.
-Van Helsing is friends with Dr. Jekyll.
-Movie is said to be campy but not silly, with a good amount of blood, possibly even going for an R rating.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cISjYRdXuNc



They used Shin Godzilla to make Shin Gomess. The meta joke there is actually pretty genius, not gonna lie. The original Gomess from 1966 was made from modifying an old Godzilla suit.

[Dragaros]

Saw Top Gun: Maverick. It was badass. A movie that's worthy of being among the ranks of other great sequels like Empire Strikes Back, Aliens, and Terminator 2. Highly recommended. See it on as big a screen as you can find.

"Paramount/Skydance’s “Top Gun: Maverick” has broken both the sound barrier and the Memorial Day weekend box office record with an estimated four-day opening of $156 million from 4,735 theaters. With that total, the blockbuster, starring Tom Cruise, has beaten the record held by “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” which took in $153 million, a record that has stood since 2007. [...] “Top Gun: Maverick” also blows away the personal best opening weekend record for Cruise, which was previously the $64 million opening for “War of the Worlds” in 2005. Combined with an estimated $124 million grossed overseas through Sunday, “Top Gun: Maverick” has earned more than $250 million globally so far."

Welcome to the Danger Zone.

[Alienmorph]

Read a few rumors that Universal wants to try to make a cinematic universe with their classic monster IPs yet again. Probably BS, but just for the record:

► Show Spoiler

-Plan is to start things off with a Van Helsing movie.
-Van Helsing's family is killed by Dracula and his brides, which begins his life-long obsession with studying and hunting monsters.
-Dracula is not the main villain, he's being saved as the ultimate big bad for the series' finale. Elizabeth Báthory, raised from the dead as a vampire, is the villain of the film. Helena Bonham Carter is supposedly being eyed for the role.
-Van Helsing is friends with Dr. Jekyll.
-Movie is said to be campy but not silly, with a good amount of blood, possibly even going for an R rating.

That... is not a bad idea for the start of a series. Sooo there's probably a catch, or it's fake.

[Alienmorph]

Goin' to watch JW: Dominion later today, it's a national holiday around here, so the movie comes out a bit sooner to coincide with that.

Fingers crossed it's better than Fallen Kingdom... shouldn't be too difficult...

[Dragaros]

Just some observations from watching Obi-Wan Kenobi, as I'll reserve my total judgement until the show is over:

► Show Spoiler

--Kenobi is rusty as fuck. Looks like he's completely out of practice in the Force and with his lightsaber. He's in no shape to fight Vader. He still plans on training Luke when he's older, but he himself hasn't been keeping up with his own training for some reason. He's done too good a job of trying to hide and blend in, I guess.

--Kenobi hasn't been able to commune with Qui-Gon's Force Ghost yet. He desperately wants to, but hasn't been able to.

--Kenobi has a day job carving up meat from a giant sand shark.

--Kenobi doesn't have his hut yet. He's currently living in a cave.

--All the other inquisitors view Third Sister with contempt, so she's desperate to prove herself and get the recognition she believes she deserves, which makes her reckless, impatient and hot-tempered.

--Third Sister discovers that Senator Bail Organa and Kenobi were once friends in the archives, so she has bounty hunters kidnap the 10 year old Leia hoping to lure Kenobi out of hiding and into a trap without drawing attention so she can take the credit and not get in trouble for such a brazen action.

--Kenobi sees an old 501st Legion Clone Trooper abandoned by the Empire and living as a purposeless, penniless homeless war veteran on the streets, and takes pity on him by giving him some money for a warm meal, understanding that they were both victims of the Sith's revenge.

--Kenobi finally has to call upon the Force again to stop Leia from falling to her death.

--Third Sister stabs the Grand Inquisitor in the gut to make sure he doesn't steal credit for Kenobi's capture. Either he dies from this, which breaks canon since he's supposed to later die in Rebels, or he survives, but he hasn't shown up yet since his stabbing, so...

--Third Sister somehow knows that Vader and Anakin are one-in-the same. She's the one who lets Kenobi know he's alive, rather than him seeing a report of Vader's battle on Kashyyyk like in the old EU.

--Kenobi's shock and horror at learning Vader's alive sends a ripple in the Force and Vader senses it.

--Quinlan Vos gets name dropped. He's still alive and helps smuggle Force-sensitive children out of the Empire's clutches.

--Jabiim is canon again.

--Kenobi reveals that he has a younger brother somewhere out there in the galaxy. He has vague memories of his original biological family.

--Vader arrives on the planet Kenobi and Leia are currently on. He starts brutally murdering civilians to draw Kenobi out, including Force Choking a father, breaking a boy's neck and dragging a woman through the streets. Kenobi lures Vader away to protect the villagers and make sure Leia isn't discovered. Vader hunts down Kenobi in the dark like a serial killer from a Slasher movie, before they finally have some words and their rematch. Vader kicks Kenobi's ass effortlessly, before viciously burning him in fire to make him suffer as he had suffered on Mustafar. The fight choreography is sadly not great in this fight, but Vader being presented as an unstoppable, wrathful juggernaut who's just toying with a frightened Obi-Wan to prolong his suffering is kinda neat. (No doubt after Kenobi has a chance to heal, he'll commune with Qui-Gon, be properly motivated again and get back into Jedi fighting shape in time for another duel in the last episode.)

Kenobi gets away from Vader in a way that is really contrived. Like, we all know Kenobi has to survive, but here there's no reason beyond "the plot demands it" because Vader could have easily caught him but doesn't. If you're going to separate the hero and the villain so the villain can no longer pursue, you have to do it in a way that doesn't make the villain look incompetent.

Leia gets captured by Third Sister AGAIN, in a really weird way that involved her somehow getting ahead of her in a one-way underground tunnel even though Leia had a massive head start, or without bumping into Leia's guide, who had turned around to assist Obi-Wan. Sloppy storytelling.

The cinematography is strangely bad at times with really annoying and choppy shaky-cam.

Playing fast and lose with the lore in places.

[Alienmorph]

Alright, JW: Dominion was indeed better than Fallen Kingdom. Probably the best of the 3 Jurassic World movies, in fact, tho that's not saying a lot.

It's not amazing or anything, but I'd say it's worth watching on the big screen once in your life, for sure.

The effects are both better and worse. The CGI is a bit more polished and there's a lot more puppetts, but said puppets are stiff as fuck and it's hard to decide if they or the CG animals look worse.

The movie felt... a lot like Godzilla vs Kong. You can absolutely tell that it was chopped to bits to make it more fast-paced and reduce the running time to get more screenings per day. I guess #releasetheTrevorrowCut will have to become a thing lol

It's NOT Rise of Skywalker but for Jurassic Park. It's a conclusion of the story they tried to tell with the first two films, just with some more characters and elements from the original ones as well. It's not a neverending memberberries parade either, unless you consider Alan and Ellie getting along, or people distracting dinosaurs with bright lights as such.

► Show Spoiler

First, things that I liked:

One of the things I liked the most were the worldbuilding elements. Yes, the dinosaurs rescued from Nublar were only a few dozens at best... but embryos and the tech to make many, many more is now relatively easy to get an hold off. So there's a whole underworld of illegal breeding and trading, and thus there's a LOT more dinosaurs than those initial “refugees”. Of the dinos made by InGen, the biggest populations still exsisting are in Big Rock National Park in the US and in the BioSyn Valley in northern Italy. The movie specifically says the dinos from Sorna were taken by Biosyn too;

BioSyn Valley is the main location of the film, about half of it is set there, it's basically one big publicity stunt, to let BioSyn hoard the wild dinosaurs and keep researching and breeding new ones legally. It's pretty much the sanctuary habitat Sorna or “Lockwood Island” were supposed to be;

The Malta underground dino market was a super-fun location too, given the general vibe and all the puppets hanging around in that place, it felt like it could be a place out of a Star Wars movie. Which... given that Trevorrow was fired from making a SW movie could be a thinly veiled way to take shots at Lucasfilm. Or at least it's funnier to see it that way ehe.

There's a lot of fun action scenes but many feel like they suffer from the shortening of the film, too. Some more than others, as I'll say in the “stuff I didn't like” part;

Kayla Watts was maybe a bit of an unecessary last minute addition to the cast, especially since we're already pretty crammed with characters, but she actually did have a few good moments. Tho I imagine the only thing everyone on Twitter will care about once the movie is out in the US is the blink and you'll miss it mention that she's gay;

Both the illegal dino-breeders and the people at BioSyn make fun at the idea of making hybrids instead of working with proper dinosaurs, which I'll admit... made me chuckle. The Atrociraptors are basically a pack of mini-Indoraptor, trained instead of being bred for hunting people. They do "lock on target" in same fascion as the Indo' with the laser pointer and specific sound frequency, and given how they relentlessly pursue Owen through Malta they make that whole concept from FK look a bit less idiotic in retrospect;

Now for things that were... not so great:

The villains. Oh my God, the villains are absolutely pathetic. We get a generic Scummy McPoacher in the beginning, who's the one that kidnaps Beta and Maisy, who supposedly had some beef with Owen, but he dies in Malta almost immediately. Then there's Dodgson. I dunno why it's so hard to have a good human villain in these films, but he's probably the worst we ever got. At least his death was fun. He (predictably) meets a pack of Dilophosaurus and gets a venom bukkake. Finally there's the Giganotosaurus. I said it multiple times, as a monster design, I really like the Dominion Giga. But the thing is barely in the fucking movie, and both the hybrids put up a better fight than him. I wanted to like the Giga, I really did, but he just... kinda sucks;

You can tell some of the higher-ups must have been like “Fine! You can have feathered dinosaurs, but only in small increments!” Their collective screentime is miniscule. The Therizinosaurus has one scene and then just randomly shows up in the final battle to impale the Giga. You basically saw most of the screentime of the Quetzalcoatlus and the Pyroraptor in the trailers, and the Moros sits in a terrarium in a couple scenes and that's it. Not that the other dinosaurs fair much better. The Atrociraptors are only in the chase scene in Malta, and Rexy and Blue matter so little in the grand scheme of things thei're basically in the film just to keep selling merch of them;

The human characters, at least the good guys, are handled pretty okay. One of the few mentions of Lost World and JPIII is to enstablish that Ellie is divorced, so we can get her and Alan back togheter at the end lol They retcon the retcon about the Lockwood family to make them more central to the story, but for the most part is handled tastefully. Doctor Wu gets a last minute redemption arc, but since it's implied that his last few years of “working” under Biosyn is that caused him to finally lose his God complex, it's not actually a last minute thing. The main two problems I have is that nobody ever feels in real danger, they all make it out alive and there's almost no worry they won't. Also, Grant is the butt of a LOT of jokes, as well as the only one of the old 3 who doesn't seem to have accomplished much in his life, and that really rubbed me the wrong way;

Finally, the movie does mention how people and autoctone wildlife are having problems adapting to coexist with dinosaurs, but the main biological threat in the film are the giant locusts. Basically Biosyn made locusts enhanced with paleo-DNA, to feed on non-Biosyn patented crops, but thei're growing and mutating out of control and threaten to destroy the world's food supply. THAT's the main conflict the movie revolves around, NOT the whole invasive paleo-ecosystem. The movie just ends with an Malcom-esque speech about learning to coexist with the dinosaurs, which I was shocked didn't end with “life will find a way”, and that was it. Dinosaurs in the wild are just... there to stay, da end.

[Dragaros]

Alright, JW: Dominion was indeed better than Fallen Kingdom. Probably the best of the 3 Jurassic World movies, in fact, tho that's not saying a lot.

It's not amazing or anything, but I'd say it's worth watching on the big screen once in your life, for sure.

The effects are both better and worse. The CGI is a bit more polished and there's a lot more puppetts, but said puppets are stiff as fuck and it's hard to decide if they or the CG animals look worse.

The movie felt... a lot like Godzilla vs Kong. You can absolutely tell that it was chopped to bits to make it more fast-paced and reduce the running time to get more screenings per day. I guess #releasetheTrevorrowCut will have to become a thing lol

It's NOT Rise of Skywalker but for Jurassic Park. It's a conclusion of the story they tried to tell with the first two films, just with some more characters and elements from the original ones as well. It's not a neverending memberberries parade either, unless you consider Alan and Ellie getting along, or people distracting dinosaurs with bright lights as such.

► Show Spoiler

First, things that I liked:

One of the things I liked the most were the worldbuilding elements. Yes, the dinosaurs rescued from Nublar were only a few dozens at best... but embryos and the tech to make many, many more is now relatively easy to get an hold off. So there's a whole underworld of illegal breeding and trading, and thus there's a LOT more dinosaurs than those initial “refugees”. Of the dinos made by InGen, the biggest populations still exsisting are in Big Rock National Park in the US and in the BioSyn Valley in northern Italy. The movie specifically says the dinos from Sorna were taken by Biosyn too;

BioSyn Valley is the main location of the film, about half of it is set there, it's basically one big publicity stunt, to let BioSyn hoard the wild dinosaurs and keep researching and breeding new ones legally. It's pretty much the sanctuary habitat Sorna or “Lockwood Island” were supposed to be;

The Malta underground dino market was a super-fun location too, given the general vibe and all the puppets hanging around in that place, it felt like it could be a place out of a Star Wars movie. Which... given that Trevorrow was fired from making a SW movie could be a thinly veiled way to take shots at Lucasfilm. Or at least it's funnier to see it that way ehe.

There's a lot of fun action scenes but many feel like they suffer from the shortening of the film, too. Some more than others, as I'll say in the “stuff I didn't like” part;

Kayla Watts was maybe a bit of an unecessary last minute addition to the cast, especially since we're already pretty crammed with characters, but she actually did have a few good moments. Tho I imagine the only thing everyone on Twitter will care about once the movie is out in the US is the blink and you'll miss it mention that she's gay;

Both the illegal dino-breeders and the people at BioSyn make fun at the idea of making hybrids instead of working with proper dinosaurs, which I'll admit... made me chuckle. The Atrociraptors are basically a pack of mini-Indoraptor, trained instead of being bred for hunting people. They do "lock on target" in same fascion as the Indo' with the laser pointer and specific sound frequency, and given how they relentlessly pursue Owen through Malta they make that whole concept from FK look a bit less idiotic in retrospect;

Now for things that were... not so great:

The villains. Oh my God, the villains are absolutely pathetic. We get a generic Scummy McPoacher in the beginning, who's the one that kidnaps Beta and Maisy, who supposedly had some beef with Owen, but he dies in Malta almost immediately. Then there's Dodgson. I dunno why it's so hard to have a good human villain in these films, but he's probably the worst we ever got. At least his death was fun. He (predictably) meets a pack of Dilophosaurus and gets a venom bukkake. Finally there's the Giganotosaurus. I said it multiple times, as a monster design, I really like the Dominion Giga. But the thing is barely in the fucking movie, and both the hybrids put up a better fight than him. I wanted to like the Giga, I really did, but he just... kinda sucks;

You can tell some of the higher-ups must have been like “Fine! You can have feathered dinosaurs, but only in small increments!” Their collective screentime is miniscule. The Therizinosaurus has one scene and then just randomly shows up in the final battle to impale the Giga. You basically saw most of the screentime of the Quetzalcoatlus and the Pyroraptor in the trailers, and the Moros sits in a terrarium in a couple scenes and that's it. Not that the other dinosaurs fair much better. The Atrociraptors are only in the chase scene in Malta, and Rexy and Blue matter so little in the grand scheme of things thei're basically in the film just to keep selling merch of them;

The human characters, at least the good guys, are handled pretty okay. One of the few mentions of Lost World and JPIII is to enstablish that Ellie is divorced, so we can get her and Alan back togheter at the end lol They retcon the retcon about the Lockwood family to make them more central to the story, but for the most part is handled tastefully. Doctor Wu gets a last minute redemption arc, but since it's implied that his last few years of “working” under Biosyn is that caused him to finally lose his God complex, it's not actually a last minute thing. The main two problems I have is that nobody ever feels in real danger, they all make it out alive and there's almost no worry they won't. Also, Grant is the butt of a LOT of jokes, as well as the only one of the old 3 who doesn't seem to have accomplished much in his life, and that really rubbed me the wrong way;

Finally, the movie does mention how people and autoctone wildlife are having problems adapting to coexist with dinosaurs, but the main biological threat in the film are the giant locusts. Basically Biosyn made locusts enhanced with paleo-DNA, to feed on non-Biosyn patented crops, but thei're growing and mutating out of control and threaten to destroy the world's food supply. THAT's the main conflict the movie revolves around, NOT the whole invasive paleo-ecosystem. The movie just ends with an Malcom-esque speech about learning to coexist with the dinosaurs, which I was shocked didn't end with “life will find a way”, and that was it. Dinosaurs in the wild are just... there to stay, da end.

One more week of waiting on my side of the ocean.

I am especially curious about one thing in particular:

► Show Spoiler

I heard from one rumor that its confirmed that Rexy isn't the last InGen made T-Rex, that she finds 2 more, and that they're implied to be the Male and Female couple from Sorna, brought over by BioSyn. Is that true?

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vNVGZGlUok

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7pBKceH9Gk

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km3i2xDWrm0

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUhLIEhATuM

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgk7JzxgZ5w

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urqy8DrcGBs

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzwLLKD7ZIQ

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD0U9RwMe-c

[Alienmorph]

I am especially curious about one thing in particular:

► Show Spoiler

I heard from one rumor that its confirmed that Rexy isn't the last InGen made T-Rex, that she finds 2 more, and that they're implied to be the Male and Female couple from Sorna, brought over by BioSyn. Is that true?

Kind of!

► Show Spoiler

The movie does mention that Biosyn took in the remaining dinos from Sorna, too. And at the very end, as they explain Biosyn Valley will become a nature reserve, you see Rexy interacting with a couple more tyrannosaurids. It's only a couple seconds long scene, so it's hard to tell who they're supposed to be. It could be the Sorna rex couples, or Big and Small Eatie from Camp Cretaceous. Either way, Biosyn was working on the Giga and not breeding rexes, so they are Ingen Tyrannosaurs, for sure.

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Q4VUO8OiY

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMUm_Upaqdw

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulOOON_KYHs

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEs2ziTArdk

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIdjcDTc9Vk

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWJTB6FPVaA

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_zpkX3Z3hk

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB2yD2OtPIM

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bHINFCyZ8o

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lR0pkUjzb4

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGeJczJvWns

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhD3xAIZzeg

Had to release the trailer earlier then planned because of the leak, eh?

[Alienmorph]

That looks... surprisingly good. Let's hope they don't fuck it up for the umptheen time.

[magnuskn]

Yeah, actually pretty surprisingly good.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0be8y6onkH4

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFyiHp5PSD4

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAiw0rpgoXI