Superman Red Son

This was goooood! Oh it was so good!

I am serious man if I had to rank my favorite animated DC movies this is top 5 if not even top 3, no joke this was an amazing movie. Top 3 favorite DC animated movies goes as follows, The Dark Knight Returns, Batman Mask Of The Phantasm, Superman Red Son, and I can't even believe the lukewarm reception this little feature has gotten, with most scores being an average of 3/5 or 6/10. Whaaaat?? This is 8/10 if not 9/10 material, I friggin' loved this movie it is so damn awesome! Which is funny because while I never had an issue with the idea of an elseworlds Superman story about him growing up in the Soviet Union instead of the States, it didn't sound that terribly interesting. So if the book is anything like this I'm reading it immediately! It is a fascinating concept, what if not only Superman was russian but also Batman and even Wonder Woman has strong ties to Russia? And I greatly enjoy how the film handles it, it doesn't spend an indiscriminate amount of time with Superman as an adult, we go through the history of the USSR from 1946 to 1983 experiencing several aspects of the Cold War throughout from Stalin, to the Berlin Wall, to Lex Luthor being elected President after Kennedy is assassinated, and it all works so incredibly well. I had zero complaints through the whole movie, no edgy adult humor or unnecessary swear words just a great story being told. And I can actually roll with everything the movie throws at me because it's an elseworlds story, yeah I can see Lois Lane marry Lex Luthor, I can see Jimmy Olson being a G-man for the government, I can totally buy we get Wonder Woman, Brainiac, and the Green Lantern's in the same story, and it never once feels crowded or rushed. For a movie barely under 90 minutes, it takes it's time to flesh out this reality and make it incredibly believable, I was having a grand time enjoying the story, picking out more references than you can shake a stick at, being surprised and even kind of emotionally connected to certain scenes. The cast is amazing with my man Jason Isaacs being a pretty grand Superman in my eyes, and I appreciate the fact that he still has the same morals as our Superman but bent ever so slightly to fit his growth in a totally different society. Vanessa Marshall is still a queen and I just love that they made Wonder Woman an ambassador again, on good terms with the two largest superpowers in the world and only wants peace, Gail Simone would be proud. Diedrich Bader is a great Lex Luthor, so very different from more popular iterations of the character but still the Lex we love to see and I just love that we have ginger Lex Luthor, a fact which most people never knew about the character. You get the real sense that the writers knew Superman backwords, forwards, inside and out not just simply on a character basis but the lore basis, you see bits from comics, from the Christopher Reeve movies, from the animated series, it's kind of a love letter to hardcore Superman fans. The only reason this does not get a perfect 10/10 is simply because while I liked the idea of a cloned Superman to fight for the americans it did come from out of nowhere and the title they gave him is...wow. Like a colossal unimaginative wow. And he's only there for a handful of scenes so it was a bit superflous but certainly not bad. I could not recommemd this higher if you are a comic book fan, a Superman fan, or just greatly enjoy different takes on classic stories. 4 stars, a very high 9/10 and if I did decimal points on a regular basis it gets a 9.5/10, this is a fantastic movie and well worth buying without a doubt.

What will come next week? Even I'm not too sure but rest assured the show will continue on as usual.

Star Wars Rebels: Season 4

Rebel scum....

Okay, fine! The last season was good, I'm not so sure it's the best, I still say the 3rd season was the best but for the end of a series it was fine. I got to say though I was so concerned about an episode titled "Worlds Between Worlds" not only did it remind me of that stupid friggin' line from Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, but it introduces a premise that could severely destroy Star Wars but they showed restraint and they did the right thing. I do have complaints. Mainly down to one factor, they didn't go all out. Now what do I mean by all out? Simple, you go dark. You push the threat to the next level, you show people die, you touch on darker aspects of war. And while they kinda do that, they wimp out. I fully expected the entire Ghost crew to bite the dust, pull a Rogue One, everyone dies, the end. But they don't and it bugs the hell out of me. You never see these people again, so why not make their deaths powerful and memorable? That's what pissed me off the most, they couldn't kill people. I know this is for kids, but Clone Wars was for kids and people got straight up executed in that show! So why not show some heroes die or stormtroopers be cut to shreds by a lightsaber? What are they gonna do, pull the plug on your final season?? Go all out, push the characters to the limit, elevate the threat and the danger of not only Thrawn but The Emperor himself! Do something! I don't hate this show, I really don't but on the verge of the end you gotta go off the deep end. Beyond that factor, the season was good. It did not end the way I thought in any fashion, but it was a decent end to a good show. The story is good though, with Ezra and the Ghost crew taking missions for the Rebel Alliance and trying to liberate Ezra's planet of Lothal. Throw in good character moments, decent action, and a pretty um....liberty taking ending that will make some people happy but me, I'm just not feeling it. I'm happy Rex made it though! But Thrawn...it killed me. I am wondering why they brought in Rukh if they never intended of using him that way, but it was cool seeing him. Oh yeah, heavy underuse of Thrawn. Like, how dare you? He did have the most badass moment in Star Wars, more so than Vader in a long hallway in my opinion. Yes. I said that. I have such respect for this show and use of Expanded Universe content, which I am always thrilled to see so I can't be too upset. It's a very good show that kids will look back on 10 or 15 years from now and remember fondly, and how on Earth can I hate that? That is beyond awesome and cool to me! So the saying still holds truth in Star Wars, "For those who remember, for those who will never forget, and for a whole new generation who will experience it for the very first time.". I greatly enjoyed Star Wars Rebels and it is sad to see it end, but there will be more greatness in the future. Everything is proceeding as I have forseen....

Star Wars Rebels: Season 3

What the hell? This shouldn't have taken so long. They literally did a Christmas break, which I can fully understand, it lasted for nearly a month, fine. But then they had the gall to take almost a whole nother month off, and just to add insult to injury it was between a two part story. This series should have already been ended in either late February or early March. Not almost fraking April!!

Ugh, anyway following the kickass season 2 finale how does this hold up? Quite well actually, but really the sheer focal point of viewing this season besides the usual Star Wars fan ideology is because of Grand Admiral Thrawn. This is major to the hardcore Star Wars fan. Thrawn has been in Star Wars since 1991, but recently since Episode 7 was deemed Legends, it never happened it was just a tale. But now he's back, it was due to the season 3 trailer that I went out and bought The Thrawn Trilogy (Close to finishing the last book.) , and pre-ordered the new book Thrawn written by the man who created him Timothy Zahn. So going into season 3, I was expecting great things, what I got was a decent continuation of the story, with the same characters that had minor character development, and Grand Admiral Thrawn being just as I had imagined him. It was a good season, had only a few filler episodes maybe 3 or 4 out of 22 episodes, so not bad and even then they have an interesting factor in them, like seeing what looks like Dark Troopers but are really a cross between a super battle droid and a stormtrooper, and a similar ship to Dash Rendar's. Plenty of nice nods to the Expanded Universe are within this series. What kind of sucks though is, like season 1 the finale which is actually a two part ending, feels like just another episode. It wasn't this amazing, groundbreaking episode that would have reprocussions in the next season. It's just eh, we lost a bit but whatever. Nobody dies, nothing is truly resolved, and we're pretty much where we started at the beginning of the season. La dee da. Alright, good points! Thrawn obviously, Tom Baker as The Bendu was awesome because it's Tom Baker, that voice is just mesmerizing, and....that's it. Everything else is just okay. Except for Kanan's mask, I hate it. It does nothing, the design is wretched, it has no artistic or practical appeal to me. Other than that though, the season is just okay. Just watch it either for Tom Baker or Thrawn.

Oh, but we are not done yet. Our buisness in a galaxy far, far away has not yet been completed.

Star Wars Rebels: Season 2

Now it's kicking off.

A vast improvement over the first, season two of Rebels picks up on all the elements that they did fairly well in the first season. Our crew of freedom fighters have now fully joined the Rebellion and have begun to slowly form the basis of their operations, with the Empire always hot on their trail. The action has been upped significantly, the character development continues in some cases brilliantly, we get a few familiar faces this season that never ceases to make me happy, and the finale alone is what brought Rebels on the map for me. If you made it through the first season and thought it was good, by the end of this season you will consider it to be great. Pretty much the season finale to season two combined with the trailer for season three is what got me to watch the show, and once I got the backstory and re-watched the final scenes of the finale, it got ten thousand times better than it already was. I'm excited to watch season three, it's only I think maybe three or four episodes until the end of that so I timed my watchings perfectly. Hell, maybe even in a week or two I can fully review season three! One thing I have noticed though is the big bad of the seasons are surprisingly not in it often, the main oppressive force is the Empire as a whole. The first season had the Inquisitor which was a basic but still interesting villain that appeared throughout the first season but at the end of season one it is very clear who is taking the forefront of the villain role, and yet...he's in it for two episodes, the first and last episode of the season. That kinda sucks but I'm amazed they got the original voice actor for the role which is just the cherry on top of this sundae, but you can forgive it solely because of the duel at the end. I just hope they don't follow suite for season three, I want to see the Grand Admiral in action often, because if you know anything about the Expanded Universe of Star Wars then you can understand my concern for this character. But needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed this season of Rebels much more than the last. I'm excited to start watching season three and if all goes well, you can expect that review before the end of this month.

Star Wars Rebels: Season 1

I didn't have high hopes, but by God it's not half bad.

So Star Wars Rebels takes place a few years before Rogue One (I love how I can say that now.) following a group of smugglers who slowly transform from mercenaries/smugglers to freedom fighters battling against the Empire and creating the spark of rebellion. So the story starts off with this kid Ezra he just lives his life on his home planet until he runs across this crew sabotaging Imperial supply routes and this crew is very unique in the Star Wars universe, we have a Twi'lek pilot named Hera who pilots their ship the Ghost, Kanan who seems to be the leader of the group and has a bit of a past to him, a Mandalorian explosives expert who is a young girl named Sabine, a Lasat called Zeb who is like if Wolverine was an alien in Star Wars, and their astromech droid named Chopper who is a bit of a wise ass. Ezra soon joins the team as they go through a mish-mash of different missions almost all around being a nuisance to the Galactic Empire. It has interesting and unique character development which appears every now and then, granting significant growth as characters and not just being like, oh yeah Hera's just a pilot and that's about it. No, they build on them slowly but satisfyingly. Now the story follows in direct correlation with the previous animated series Clone Wars, now it's not pertinent to watch Clone Wars but it does help in the long run with this series. Now one thing I cannot avoid talking about is the art design. It is like a love letter to Ralph McQuarrie who did all the conceptual art to the original Star Wars movie, the series could not adapt it more if it tried. And I have seen many of the conceptual artwork of the original movie, and I greatly appreciate the look of it all. Now I have to admit, I did not start watching Rebels until this week, I thought it was just a dumb kid cash in on Star Wars on the Disney Channel, but when I saw the trailer to season 3 and heard much fan talk about it I decided to take a look. It's a kid show without a doubt, whereas Clone Wars was aimed more towards early pre-teen to teenagers (I was a teenager by the time Clone Wars really took off) and yet I never watched that show until a few years after it ended, because I watched the original Clone Wars mini series that came out between Episode 2 and before Episode 3 even hit theaters and I thought it was an unnecesary remake. My God, was I wrong. So wrong. I apologize to Lucasfilm and Cartoon Network. So yeah, I wasn't expecting greatness but I got a decent show and it got really good a few episodes before the end of the season. If you like Star Wars or have kids that enjoy Star Wars this is a decent show to put on.

As of today I am almost finished season 2 and will have the review up next week. I won't do just one review a week when it comes to television shows, so no worries about lack of content but I will probably have to cut it back to two reviews a week. Yeah, material is running thin but not entirely gone. Merely a setback but it does not dampen my spirits, I shall persevere and continue bringing you more recommendations and opinions. See you next week.