Bob’s Burgers Movie – The Plot

The plot is pretty standard to that of the show. Bob and the restaurant are in trouble. They need money, as normal, not to pay Mr Fischoeder but so that they can pay the bank. Time is running out on them and then a sink hole opens up in front of their place.

Will they be able to get the money in time when one is coming to their restaurant? And what will the kids find down in the sink hole that is going to add even more to the drama of the movie?

What Doesn’t Work?

Firstly, I think the animation only kind of works for this. They make the animation better, there is a bigger budget so why wouldn’t they. But part of the charm of Bob’s Burgers is that it isn’t all shiny, it doesn’t try and be 3D and have a ton of depth to it. The movie does, and as a fan of the show, it just feels different. It’s not a massive negative and I got over it quickly while watching, but there are times where it just feels off because of that.

The plot, for me is also just okay. Now, this is another minor negative. The negative piece about it is not that the plot isn’t fun, but it is generally an episode feeling plot stretched out over a full movie. It might really be three episodes squished together around different things. I won’t go into detail as to not spoil anything, but the plot should be better for something that is longer and needs more plot than an episode.

What Works?

The characters, as always in Bob’s Burgers the characters work. And with more time to shine they still work well. Each of them is given a moment to shine and a moment to show off what makes them who they are. Which, I appreciate as it helps fill in for the gaps in the plot by reminding you about the character.

The jokes also still work well in the movie. They take what works well in the show for the likes of Tina, Louise, Gene, and really all the characters we see, and run with them. That means you have a lot of good laughs while watching it because of absurd things that are done. They don’t up the ante on the jokes too much, but they manage to get a lot into the movie.

Who Is It For?

If you like Bob’s Burgers you are going to like this. If you don’t like Bob’s Burgers you likely won’t like this. I don’t think it does that much different from the show, just longer. That is a downside to it, it isn’t going to bring in new viewers. Granted, that isn’t a bad thing, it is made for the fans of the show.

Final Thoughts – Bob’s Burgers Movie

This movie neither wowed me or disappointed me. It is really just a longer Bob’s Burgers episode made into a movie. It’s a bit shinier, didn’t need to be, but everything that I love about the show is there. Still, when I think about it, I would watch it again, but not often. It is an episode but just one that is harder to sit down and watch.

In the end, I think I just wanted a bit more. I wanted it to feel like Bob’s Burgers but bigger, and I don’t feel like it is that much bigger. There is more song and dance, but even that is a regular thing on Bob’s Burgers. I’m not sure what they could or should have done to make it feel bigger, I just wish it had.

Have you had a chance to checkout the movie? Let me know your thoughts on it down in the comment section below.

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Black Widow Spoilers Ahead

As that says, there are going to be spoilers ahead of this film. If you are interested in seeing, I suggest going to a theater to see it, if you can, or checking it out over on Disney+ with their premiere access. That should give you some idea if I like it, but you can make that determination yourself.

The Plot

The Black Widow, it has a pretty straight forward plot. In the movie, we start immediately after the events of Civil War and the battle at the German airport. Black Widow is on the run and using some of her contacts to find a place to lay low. She finds a spot, but a delivery of mail from her old safe house in Budapest brings unwanted attention from the Taskmaster and the Red Room. This is because Yelena, who was under a drug induced mind control by the Red Room was given a drug that caused her to break free.

Black Widow goes to Budapest where she teams up with Yelena. Natasha finds out that when she was there last time and she thought she took down the red room, she hadn’t. The man she’d been trying to kill, to prove her loyalty to SHIELD, Dreykov had survived. And he was still running the Red Room and the widow program.

Yelena and Natasha go to Siberia to break their “father”, who had played their father when they were undercover in the US, out of prison. Alexei, the Red Guardian, was the Soviet’s answer to Captain America. Their own super soldier. He, unfortunately doesn’t have any connection to the Red Room anymore. But he knows that their mother from their time undercover, Melina, likely does.

They go to her, she does indeed and that gets them into the Red Room. Though, not the way that they had planned, being captured, instead, by the agents of Dreykov. However, it turns out that Natasha and Melina had hatched out a plan. They swapped faces, and Natasha was able to get her revenge and take down the Red Room. Along the way finding out that Taskmaster was Dreykov’s daughter, whom she had used to find Dreykov and thought she’d killed originally in Budapest.

What I Didn’t Like

Now, that was a pretty long winded recap. Normally I sum this up better, especially for something that has a straight forward plot, but I wanted to explain things up there for the plot, versus down in what I did and didn’t like.

The main thing that I didn’t like was the use of Taskmaster. There is little to no reason that Taskmaster needed to be turned into a cyborg, basically, or that they even needed Taskmaster for the plot. Natasha has enough past trauma to go through with taking down the Red Room to get closure that you don’t need a notable villain besides Dreykov. And then Taskmaster ends up getting deprogrammed and set free. But what does that even look like? She isn’t going to behave like a normal person in the real world.

But, honestly, that’s about it that I didn’t like. Now, keep in mind, I am talking about likes and didn’t like, not good, bad and average. Average is going to be everything else.

What I Liked

I thought that Florence Pugh was amazing in this. Her portrayal of Yelena really worked and she was the main reason to watch this movie. And with the end credit scene, is the main reason to have watched this movie. She just worked really well as a jaded figure who was out of the Red Rooms control, but doesn’t know how to live. Yelena is a good counter point to Black Widow. She is fairly jaded with everything, and harbors resentment but now has new freedom.

And then that End Credits scene. Florence Pugh is going to be showing up in the Hawkeye TV show. So it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out. Clearly going to be a continuation of that end credit scene. Also, this was supposed to be the first time we met Val. I actually think it works much better that we met Val in Falcon and the Winter Soldier before we met her here. It gives us more context for her and makes this scene play better.

I also like David Harbour as the Red Guardian. He was mainly there for comic relief and to do a bit of fighting. But that worked for the film. It needed someone who could help balance out what would have been a very serious and dark movie. Marvel does a good job of adding characters who help keep their films from diving too dark, which I like. A good superhero movie should have that balance, because the comics have that balance, at least from Marvel and DC.

Finally, I liked the balance that it got. This is the type of spy action film that I want. Now, I know I’m in the minority, but I felt like the previous Marvel attempt, Captain America: Winter Soldier, got caught being half a spy movie and half a superhero movie and not doing either amazingly well. This is more of the spy action movie that I like. Now, I know that people will disagree, but for me, that’s how I feel about it.

Black Widow Final Thoughts

Like I said before the spoilers started, this is a movie that is very much worth checking out. The action is really good throughout. I feel like it has some Bond elements to it. It actually has some direct parallels to Moonraker. A Bond Film that I haven’t seen in a long time, if ever. But now I want to watch it. The action is really good and it balances that level of humor and seriousness really well. I am excited to see more Yelena in the MCU.

This, isn’t a Top 10 Marvel movie for me, but probably Top 15. And I really only have a three or four that I don’t think are good movies. So Top 15 is a really enjoyable movie still. Where does it rank in the Marvel movies for you?

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Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Bill and Ted are two high school students who want nothing more than to take the world by storm with their band, the Wyld Stallyns. However, they are almost failing history, and if that happens, Ted is going to be sent to military school. Rufus, a man from the future, comes to the past to save them and give them the push they need to save reality.

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey

Back again Bill and Ted are just middling musicians and Wyld Stallyns hasn’t taken off, there’s a chance, however, as they get into Battle of the Bands. But things change again when more future people come back and Bill and Ted’s life changes most drastically. Will Bill and Ted be able to get to the battle of the bands and save the world?

Bill & Ted Face the Music

Life still hasn’t gone right for Bill and Ted. Things were going well for the Wyld Stallyns after the battle of the bands, and they had played the Grand Canyon, but that fame didn’t last and they still hadn’t figured out the song that was going to unite the world across all of space and time. And their wives and relatives are having trouble seeing the big picture. Their daughters still believe in them, but when the future begins to doubt them, will they be able to save all of reality?

Thoughts on the Films

This is an extremely silly series of films, with a lot of 80’s and early 90’s feel to it even in the film, Bill & Ted Face the Music, that came out this year. I think that makes the series work well enough. The first two are extremely entertaining, I think that it works as a series that makes little to no sense, and does some very fun things. The third one has a little bit of a different pattern to the ending, but one that works well, as well, though not really any sort of surprise to it. But they keep a similar feel to the jokes throughout all three of the films, and it works in all of them.

Bill and Ted are both very entertaining characters in these films, and the fact that they have a lot of the same talent throughout the whole thing is really interesting. They do recast a few of the characters between films, but a lot of the key players remain the same. The fact that Missy is played by the same actress throughout is a lot of fun, and kind of hilarious how they weave that story throughout the whole thing.

I do think that in order of best to worst is the order that they came out. That isn’t a knock against Bill and Ted Face the Music as much as it is a comment on how solid the first two are. They really hit the right notes for the comedy and I think that Bill and Ted Face the Music is good at hitting those notes, but can at time fall into a different type of sophomoric humor than the previous two installments. And a lot of that is just because of how much time has passed between the first two installments and the third as well, it doesn’t flow as well with the actors.

Final Thoughts

The whole of the three films are very entertaining and definitely worth checking out. They definitely need to be watched in order otherwise they won’t make any sense, so I’d skip just going for the latest and greatest. I do wonder how much I’ll rewatch Bill & Ted Face the Music, but I know that I’ll watch the other two again for sure. They definitely did a solid job, though, for taking something that has been a cult classic for a long time and giving it a fitting sequel. Definitely a trilogy of sophomoric films with a interesting twist to watch.

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Sonic The Hedgehog is the story of, well, Sonic The Hedgehog. He is sent via a ring portal to Earth to hide his awesome speed from those on his home planet. But he obviously can’t help but run in the shadows, because that’s what Sonic does, he runs. Things go awry when an incident occurs and attention is drawn to something weird being in the area where he lives. He needs to then go to another world, but because of an accident, he doesn’t have his rings anymore so he can’t transport, will he get them in time or be found out.

I think the first thing to talk about in this film is Jim Carrey. This film isn’t carried by Jim Carrey, but this is the Jim Carrey from the likes of The Mask, Ace Ventura, and Liar Liar. Everything is over the top, exaggerated, and really what is needed for this film. Jim Carrey going full Jim Carrey helps out this film as he makes a wonderful Dr. Robotnik. Ben Schwartz then voicing Sonic is great, and James Marsden is a wonderful foil as a trusting character, but also kind of that exasperated “why is this happening to me” role in this film. There are other good characters in this film, Adam Pally as Wade, Tika Sumpter as Maddie, and Lee Majdoub as Agent Stone all really round out what turned out to be a solid cast for something that doesn’t have the biggest names, after Jim Carrey, and is a kids film.

Let’s talk a little bit about that, this is 100% a kids film in the best way. There are three types of kids films in my opinion, there are kids films that are only for kids and nothing really for adults, there are kids films that have jokes for kids and adults, and there are kids films that have poop jokes. This in that middle group. The jokes that they give, especially to Jim Carrey, paired with his overly exaggerated movements work well. The jokes will hit on word play for adults and the movements and delivery will still be funny for the kids. All of this while not pandering to a more adult sense of humor. It doesn’t do veiled innuendo for jokes, because eventually, and probably too early kids will figure those out. So this will be a film that can stand on it’s own for a while.

As for the story itself, it’s simple enough. They do a little bit of clever stuff with the rings, but nothing that is too surprising or too much of a twist, which I think is how it should be. Again this is a kids film, it should tell a straight forward story and it most certainly does that. But that isn’t to say that this is a boring story. They do a good job with everything that is going on to make entertaining. There are obviously a lot of moments of humor, but there are moments of emotion, and some fun ideas played around with in this movie. They don’t shy away from emotions in the male characters which is nice as well. The story is just a well enough done straight forward story for a light and fun film, anything more would feel like a lot for it anyways, and it isn’t a that dumb a story either, which a lot of kids films can be.

Finally, let’s talk about the hedgehog in the room, how does the new Sonic look? I mentioned the initial trailer where his body was just weird, and his teeth were flat out creepy. The new Sonic in this look amazing! He looks like he has stepped out of a video game, which is exactly what he should look like. But he doesn’t also then look out of place with everything else. Some of that is Dr. Robotnik also being very over the top as well, on a person. I think they did an amazing job of blending everything together and making it work well in the film. The special effects are nice, and sonic really never looks out of place, which is impressive for them completely rebuilding him after that first trailer.

So, overall, I’ve talked about this film generally in a positive light. And I don’t really think I have a negative for it. This is a good film. It isn’t an amazing film by any means, but it’s a ton of fun for adults, and I’m guessing it’s a ton of fun for kids as well, just with how it played out. There really aren’t any massive weaknesses to it. That said, this is a kids film, I firmly believe that unless you like goofy humor and word play, this will just be a meh film for you. But if you have kids, this is going to be better than a dumb kids film or one that has “hidden adult jokes and if you like word play, Jim Carrey does a good job with it. Definitely one worth checking out, and I don’t know if it’ll get a sequel, but it should.

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Crimson Peak is the story of Edith Cushing, an aspiring author, who has her world turned on it’s head through a series of tragic events and the introduction of a mysterious stranger, Thomas Sharpe. Falling in love with him, she returns to the family manor and clay mines which had brought them to her town and her father in the first place. Things aren’t going well there, the manor is falling apart and Thomas’ sister Lucille is not welcoming of her. Then, she starts to see ghosts who are wandering the manor and tormenting her. Something is very much not as it seems, but can she find out in time?

Guillermo Del Toro is a master of a beautiful aesthetic, and this film is no different. Everything is shot amazingly for a nice creepy factor but still has almost a haunting beauty to it. The manor is amazingly done, and the aesthetic even before and just the costuming makes everything stand out in this film. The horrific elements even have what is an interesting aesthetic to them and are almost beautiful in their own way.

But, for me, I don’t know that was enough to save the film. I liked the acting in the film, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, and Mia Wasikowska do a good job in this film. I think that Jessica Chastain in a lot of ways steals the show, though, I won’t say why as that will spoil things. In terms of a horror film, the acting generally much much better than you’d see. But in terms of overall acting, it is just good, nothing that stands out so amazingly, but also nothing that is wrong with it. I think that they work for the aesthetic that has been created, but, and I’ll get to it next, I think that the story doesn’t do them a ton of favors.

In terms of the story, the issue is that this is a movie that doesn’t do anything unexpected. I think that for me was what really disappointed. It follows a lot of horror tropes, but it doesn’t really have any of the predictable twists, but that’s because it just doesn’t really have any twists in it. I think that the story just ends up feeling flat which causes the rest of the film to suffer. It feels like it’s a bit of a waste when it comes to the aesthetic because nothing stands out as that amazing a horror element. Instead it’s just an average story that bounces between feeling like half a period piece, half a horror film, and generally fairly unfocused. Del Toro has blended two elements well before with Pan’s Labyrinth, but this one ends up not having the same heart and depth that one does. And in some ways, that makes it more disappointing. I like a lot of what Del Toro does, I’m a big fan of Pacific Rim and Pan’s Labyrinth is great, but this movie just lacks the heart that those have, and anything that feels that interesting, beyond the setting. It feels like it should do so much more than it does, instead ending up a beautiful hollow shell.

Let me finish up by saying that when this movie came out originally, I was very excited for it. I’m glad that I didn’t see it in theaters, but I’m also not sorry that I’ve watched it. Like I said, Del Toro nails the aesthetic for this film, there is the right amount of creep and gore, but it’s lacking the heart. And I think for a film that takes itself seriously, it needs that heart, otherwise it feels, as I said before, like a beautiful but hollow shell. If it was more of a B film feel, it’d need other things as well, if it was going for more of a suspenseful story, it’d need other things. Overall, an enjoyable watch, but in the end, just missing that final little bit to put it over the edge.

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Onward is a story that focuses around two Elven brothers, Ian and Barley. Their life is pretty normal for their world, a world in which magic has existed but when technology became easier than magic, the magic users and magic in the world kind of faded away until everyone forgot about them and just saw it more as a legend. However, when a magical mishap happens, Barley convinces Ian that the only way to fix it is through magic and that they need to go on a grand quest, somewhat based around Barley’s favorite role playing game, so that can fix what went wrong.

Now, it’s hard not to go more into the story as that really drives some of the themes of the movie, which Pixar, like normal, does a good job of creating meaningful and real moments. I’ll just say that the biggest one is loss and kind of overcoming emotions and baggage around that loss, not by pushing it down but by exploring and questing through that loss to see what came come out of it, what new things can be found and explored. I think that it handles it really well and handles it in a way that I don’t see many other movies handle it, some of that is because delving into grief and loss can be hard for movies and doesn’t really drive a plot, though they made it work well in this one. I think it’s actually important to have a movie that does this right now though, because a lot of people, whether they fully realize it or not are going through the grieving process of their normal routine and life as we knew it. And really, there’ll be many moments outside of Covid-19 that this is true for people as well, it just stands out as a world we’re going through it together.

As for the other parts of it, the story is not complex, however, I think that is to it’s benefit. There are some decent jokes, but mainly it’s about that feeling of adventure and exploring on this grand quest and how that pairs with the theme of loss and grief and dealing with that. The jokes in this film are fine, I don’t think that they are amazingly funny, but they are generally pretty good callbacks to previous references. Also, just the concept of the world is really interesting, that idea of there being magic in the world is something that I think is meant for more than just the story as written but about finding the magic in our actual world versus just having technology for everything. But that is a much lighter and subtle theme on everything wrapped up in Onward’s versions of D&D.

The acting in the film is good as well. The main two characters, Ian and Barley are played by Tom Holland and Chris Pratt respectively. They both do a good job with the voice acting and portray emotions very well. It is a little bit funny as Ian just has that same feel and almost a bit of a look as Tom Holland does in real life. Those are the main two characters, but the others in it are good as well, there aren’t really any humdrum performances, but everyone else generally steps aside to let those two characters really drive the story. Laurel, voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, has her moments to shine as well, so it isn’t just only the two of them, Ian and Barley, all of the time.

Finally, how does this compare to other Pixar films? There are a lot of Pixar films out there at this point with the Incredibles, Cars, Up, Brave, Wall-E, Toy Story 1-4, so on and so forth. I actually put Onward pretty high up on the list. I think it does a better job than some at telling a story with a complex theme without the theme being as blatantly laid out. Now, there are still moments that make it obvious what the theme is, but I don’t feel like it’s quite as forceful as it could have been portrayed if they hadn’t been careful with the story. I also like it a lot because it is nerdy, it has that interesting fantasy twist to it and the nods to Dungeons and Dragons. I don’t know that I’d say it’s the best, but the ones that I for sure like better, Up, Wall-E, and The Incredibles, I think that I’d want to watch Onward more than some of them just because it has a higher fun factor to it.

Have you had a chance to checkout Onward? What are your thoughts on it, where does it fall in your Pixar rankings?

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So, without any spoilers, the Rise of Skywalker is the 9th Star Wars film. George Lucas had originally planned on doing nine films in the 1980’s and had it plotted out, but due to the stress of making the original trilogy and the following that he had, he held off for a long time, until he made The Phantom Menace and then Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, which were not that well received. He then later sold the rights to Star Wars to Disney who with JJ Abram at the helm for the first film, The Force Awakens, started a new trilogy.

Now that we have a proper spoiler buffer, let’s talk about Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker. This, like I said, is the ninth film in the Skywalker Saga, and the end of the Skywalker Saga (theoretically). After The Last Jedi, which was half of a good film and some other characters being taken in a direction that they weren’t set-up for in The Force Awakens, JJ Abrams came back in to wrap up the story that he had laid out for Rian Johnson, which had then been promptly thrown away. Abrams then had to try and cut down and cram what he had laid out previously into a single film. That might sound like a bad thing, but I think that it worked for this film.

In the Rise of Skywalker, we start out by getting a pretty heavy information dump about how the Emperor has been broadcasting his return from somewhere deep in space. Kylo Ren, with the First Order, has been trying to track down this signal, but they need an old Sith map to be able to do so. Finding one, he goes to the Emperor. In the mean time, Finn, Poe, and Chewbacca chasing down leads to the First Orders plans and what is happening with their search for the Emperor and plans for domination. Rey is back with the resistance training to become a Jedi. She leaves her training when they get wind that Kylo has found the Emperor, and they go searching for a map of their own. This leads them into a handful of adventures where they run across someone who Poe used to run with and run spice with and they end up wiping out C3PO’s memory in order to translate where the map is hidden. Rey, during this time, becomes more and more obsessed with finding and defeating the Emperor. This leads to her going to a moon of Endor where they come across more Stormtroopers who have rebelled against the First Order. Meanwhile, Kylo is able to track down Rey and they fight on the destroyed Death Star with Kylo getting the upper hand on Rey, but then Leia, feeling the anger and disturbance from her son, used the last of her energy to stop Kylo. In a fit of rage, Rey strikes Kylo who has lowered all defenses and dropped his lightsaber, realizing, though that her anger has taken over, she uses the force to heal him. She runs away, in Kylo’s ship, to the planet where Luke had hid away, and there, meeting the force ghost of Luke, he convinces her that she needs to go and confront her grandfather, Palpatine. The rest of the resistance tracks her flying through a gravitational field, which is why the map was needed and goes to aid her. However, things look bleak until Lando Calrissian manages to gather up the support of people who are willing to stand up to the First Order and they join the fight. During this time, Kylo (Ben), sees a vision of Han Solo who talks to him and gets him to give up his lightsaber, returning back to being Ben Solo. He flies to the Emperor and joins Rey as they stand against the Emperor’s plan to return. The Emperor again gets the upper hand, but what Rey wasn’t able to do in her training earlier in the film, connect with the spirit of the Jedi, she was able to do in that moment and with the power of them behind her, she is able to get back up and defeat the Emperor. There is much celebrating, and Rey goes and leaves both Luke and Leia’s lightsabers back at the moisture farm (what’s left of it) where Luke grew up.

There’s just a little bit of story there, and I normally wouldn’t write out the whole thing, but this is a spoiler episode and I wanted to demonstrate how much was packed into this movie. Now, do I think that it probably would have been better split into two movies and we just lose The Last Jedi? Probably, but does that make Rise of Skywalker a bad movie? I don’t think so. I really enjoyed it in the theater and I thought that it did a good job of wrapping up the Skywalker Saga. Before going to see the movie, my hope was that it was going to wrap up the Skywalker Saga and then we wouldn’t have any more movies with Rey, Finn, Poe or Kylo. And I feel like it did that, now if Disney decides it was popular enough with those characters, they might bring them back again, but I personally don’t want it. With have a massive world, and with the great work that the Mandalorian has been doing, there is clearly room for stories that aren’t focused only around the Empire and the Skywalkers.

For me, one of the things that this film does impressively is wrap up the storylines for the original trilogy characters. We get more of a send off for Han Solo and he gets to deliver a famous line in a meaningful way. We get another send off for Luke. And we get, kind of, a send off for Leia. I feel like hers was the most lacking, which makes sense with Carrie Fishers passing. Her passing in the film is really the start of a turning point for both Kylo and Rey, and then Han and Luke, respectively, finish bringing both of the characters back around.

What might bother some people about this film, and I hinted at it in the paragraph above, with Han delivering a famous line, but there is a feeling to this film that it’s kind of a Star Wars greatest hits. We get lines, we get callbacks, Chewie finally gets his medal. This will definitely be an issue for some people who don’t know what they want, probably just to watch the original trilogy and repeat, but for me, it was what I was looking for when wrapping up the Skywalker Saga. It gave the main characters a send off that they needed and it kind of showed that the story has always been about them, even with the new cast of characters, it was still about Luke, Leia, Han, and the Emperor. For some people, that’s not going to be enjoyable, but it wrapped up the saga.

I think, it’s also fair, as this wrapped up the last trilogy in the saga, to look at this as part of the whole trilogy. I think that you’d be able to watch The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker without watching The Last Jedi and have a pretty complete film. And if someone were to create a cut of The Last Jedi that dropped out the whole gambling planet and Finn and Poe becoming whiny for no reason, you could then add back in the Luke, Rey, and Kylo story. But, I feel like Rise of Skywalker did a good job of recapping some of that information in a meaningful way. Now, yes, you would miss a little bit by skipping The Last Jedi, but less than you’d think. So as a trilogy, that’s definitely a downside for it. I don’t think that Rian Johnson set out to change it so much, but it felt like he didn’t have a full understanding of the characters. I hope that he gets a Star Wars film with his own characters, because I felt like it was interesting in concept, but overall it wasn’t set-up like it should be to continue to tell a cohesive story. But this is a considerably better trilogy than the Phantom Menace trilogy.

Overall, this was a really fun film. I think that it wrapped up stories really well, I think it was decently well acted, and I feel like the saga was completed. Now, don’t ever show me any of these characters as main characters on the big screen again, maybe in the background 10 years down the line would be fine, but even that’s questionable. Or maybe a plaque with Rey’s face on it. I’m ready for more new Star Wars, but I’m also glad to see this finish the way that it did. I hope that Disney and Kathleen Kennedy can get a better, more clear, direction for Star Wars and really be able to build off some of what Marvel has done for Disney but also to then create a more developed universe. I will also wrap this up by saying that I’m not someone who knows the extended universe stuff, but I know there were a lot of references to the stuff that I only vaguely knew about.

So, what were your thoughts on Rise of Skywalker. But, as much as that, stepping back and looking at this as the Skywalker Saga, what are your thoughts on the nine movies put together as a whole?

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Spider-man: Far From Home takes place after the snap and after the second snap when everyone was brought back. Spider-Man is having a hard time with Tony’s death. And he just wants to be a normal kid, but that is going to be too much. He has grand plans for his schools trip to Europe, getting closer to MJ and just enjoying life without the responsibility of being Spider-Man. But a phone call from Nick Fury changes that all as he has to team with Quentin Beck to defeat elementals that are destroying cities. How can Peter Parker balance being Spider-Man, but also just live his own life and not feel like he has all the pressure int he world?

This movie reminds me of Iron Man 2 in a good way. While I think they nail the bad guys better than they do in Iron Man 2, this movie is more about Peter determining what type of hero he is going to be. And it’s about him feeling and failing to live up to what he thinks Tony Stark would want him to be. And I think that it does a good job of that, you feel so much for Peter because of what has happened in Endgame, him losing his father figure in Tony Stark. It comes across that Peter almost feels guilty for it having happened, though there was nothing he could have done about it. You really get how much he’s missing him, and how much being the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man reminds him of Tony. Obviously with the suit being Tony’s tech that’s a big thing. And you can feel him trying to escape that super hero pressure mantle and just be a teenager and tell MJ that he has a crush on her. And that is a fun theme to explore, the super hero who doesn’t want to be, or can’t be the hero that they need to be or the hero that they want to be.

The acting in this film really pulls it off. Tom Holland does a great job of being that nerdy teenager who is ready to make a quip to hide his emotions, but still have to confront them. We get to see a whole lot more of the nerdy side of Peter Parker in this movie, and it’s a lot of fun. And I’m not the biggest Jake Gyllenhaal fan, mainly because of his work when he was younger just wasn’t that interesting to me. But in the role of Quentin Beck, he does a very good job. You feel the emotions that he’s feeling and they all make sense. I wasn’t in love with the casting of him as Beck, but it turned out to be a really good choice. The rest of the cast is solid around them as well, but Gyllenhaal and Holland really shine in this movie.

Now, I’m not going to spoil anything, but this movie does tie into a lot of the other movies. Some of them you don’t get the payoff until the end credits, but it sets up a launching point going forward. Now, I don’t know how they are setting it up tot use them, but things change for Peter but also some other characters in unexpected ways. Homecoming definitely feels like an MCU movie, but that one doesn’t do much more than mess up the timeline for the movies, Far From Home, on the other hand is going to make differences going forward and they could be a big changes and stories for upcoming movies. So if you were thinking about putting this one off, I wouldn’t wait too long. Spoilers, I’m sure, already exist in abundance but they are only going to be become more common place, the further from the movie.

This movie isn’t perfect, and I need to think about where I rate it in Marvel movies, but it is really good. The main issues are that it sometimes is a bit heavy handed in it’s plot. The plot is well done, but sometimes it drives home a point a bit too long, or makes a point a bit too obvious. However, it does create one of the most complex villains in the MCU. I’d put the villain after Killmonger from Black Panther and Thanos from Infinity War/Endgame in terms of good villains in the MCU, which is awesome. I love a good villain to set off against a hero, and in this case, you get a good hero performance, something that I felt like we were lacking some in Black Panther.

Definitely check out this movie if you are a Spider-Man fan, if you are an MCU fan, you will most likely enjoy it. I don’t know that you need to have seen Endgame to know what is going on, but it would help make things a whole lot clearer. And I think what you’d miss does make the story stronger, but I think it would be possible to watch it without having seen the rest. I’m going to be figuring out where I rate it in the movies, coming up here soon, so that’ll be interesting to see, but for me, this is a definite top half Marvel film.

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It’s been a while since I’ve seen a lot of these films, and Captain America: First Avenger has been quite a while as well. So how did it stack up against what I had remembered and where it was in my MCU Movie Rankings that I did after Endgame came out. Obviously, I need to rewatch everything again to see if anything else is going to shift around, but the quick summary is that I enjoyed watching Captain America: First Avenger again. I don’t think it’s without it’s flaws and compared to the origins of Iron Man and Thor, I think that it’s weaker. There will be spoilers, but this movie has been out for a long time.

I think that this movie starts off strong. I like the story of Steve Rogers and how he becomes Captain America. The whole time he’s applying for army, you feel for him, and you get a good idea of how loyal he is and how strong his convictions are. And then getting stuck encouraging people to buy bonds feels like something that would legitimately happen. I think the only part of the story to that point that feels a bit odd is the Hydra Agent blowing up everything, mainly I feel like that part of the opening of the movie was a bit rushed. Beyond that though, up through rescuing Bucky and the others is great. Unfortunately the movie starts to fall apart for me there.

What really makes it feel off is the montage sequence. If you don’t remember, it’s a sequence where Captain America and the Howling Commandos, that’s what the group run by Dum Dum Dugan is called, are just running around and punching Hydra Agents again and again. For a montage sequence to work well, you need to feel like the character is progressing towards a goal or learning something, and in this case, the montage doesn’t really provide that. You’re supposed to be getting the idea that they are cornering the Red Skull, but it doesn’t feel that way. It’s just punching some anonymous bad guys and cheering because Captain America is a hero who is beating up the bad guys. This could be a bit of nod to the fact that he punched an anonymous Hitler over and over again with the War Bond shows he was putting on, but it didn’t feel that way, it just felt like rah rah hero fighting without any purpose to it.

That’s where it starts to come apart for me, and then it continues with the actual getting to the Red Skull. Again too much punching of anonymous bad guys. Then getting captured and then getting rescued. I think the issue I have is less about that, but instead because you don’t feel like by the end of the montage that the Red Skull is much of a threat at all. I mean, we all knew that Captain America was going to win anyways, but they had done a decent job building Red Skull early in the movie, but at the end, you feel almost like he’s just another anonymous bad guy for Captain America to beat up.

Now, all of this seems like a lot of a knock on the movie. And I do think it makes it one of the weaker movies, but it’s easy to pick out what you don’t like in the film. I do want to go back and talk some things that I really want to point out how good they are. Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter works so well, and you feel like she has feelings for Steve Rogers, more so after he’s Captain America and not tiny and scrawny, but she clearly respected him and liked his attitude better than any of the other large guys who they were training, and she liked the fact that his personality didn’t change. Stanley Tucci and Tommy Lee Jones were also good in their roles. I wish we could have had more time with Tucci on the screen, but when he was on the screen he was great. It makes sense why his character died and it was needed. Finally, Howard Stark, played by Dominic Cooper is really enjoyable. You feel like the confidence that he exudes and his cockiness and you can see why Tony Stark would end up the way he did based off of Howard’s portrayal.

And I realize that I forgot one, Toby Jones as Dr. Arnim Zola, I don’t think I had realized how well he played his character. I wonder if they were planning that he’d infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. from the beginning or not, but if they did, he played that out well on screen and you can see some of his quirks that I hadn’t paid that much attention to before. In particular, I like how you can see into his mind with how he has no qualms about building weapons for people to kill people with, but he doesn’t want to see them used. His character feels like he’s, in some ways, as much in control as Red Skull is, which in some ways plays out in a future movie, but I’ll save that for that review. Toby Jones just does a great job of playing that brilliant and almost scared character.

Finally, I think that the CGI and special effects hold up well in this film. I was a little bit surprised considering how much they’ve advanced or seemed to advance in the past few years. But Captain America still looks good, and putting Chris Evans head on the scrawny body works. It didn’t feel uncanny and it didn’t look like it was poor CGI. I had thought that it might not hold up with the Red Skull or something like that, but I feel like, and this was obviously when Marvel was still ramping up, it did a good job for what had to have been a pretty small budget.

So, like I said, I don’t know that this movie is going to move up. As much as I remembered how well I liked the first half of the film, the second half falls apart some for me. And I think, like we’ll see with Thor soon, Chris Evans has to grow into the role of Captain America. I also wish, with the future films, they had done a call back to something that Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci’s character) had said, about how the super soldier serum doesn’t just make you bigger and stronger, but it makes you more of who you were before. And I think that’s something that they could have leaned into a whole lot more, especially with Captain America: Civil War. I also think that if we were to get this film now, the film would be stronger, because they know what they are doing better, but also because they wouldn’t be as worried about leaning into a 1940’s aesthetic and tropes, which I feel like they did once in a while, but generally felt a bit out of place when they did.

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This is the far flung future after humanity has blown itself up and screwed up the world. There are mobile houses that people travel around in where they can mine, and make a living. There are also bigger predator cities that chew up these smaller buildings for fuel. We meet our main character, Hester Shaw as the small vehicles that is getting chased down by a predator city. On the city we have Tom who is a researcher who has noticed that things on the city are going missing, things that could be used for a weapon.

In some way the story just sounds too predictable YA Dystopia. And I think that is some of the issue. The story leans into tropes, but leans into them too much, you want the familiar, but you also don’t want it to feel like it hits upon every trope. The movie packs in too many tropes this way and also because it tries to hit on so many things, you end up with a very disjointed story. You get a predictable bad guy with an anticlimactic end. We get a few other deaths that are supposed to feel like they mean something to the audience, but we’re not connected with the characters. It feels rushed, but also feels like it doesn’t have the action that it should. And when it does have action sequences, they aren’t anything all that interesting, and the main character who is fighting is just a poorly done character.

The characters are also an issue in this movie. Hester has an interesting backstory, and I think that Hera Hilmar does a solid job, but she isn’t given much to work with. We really don’t get to see her shine as a character either, and there is some with her look if you think about it doesn’t make a ton of sense. With Tom, played by Robert Sheehan, he’s a pretty flat character, where he was great as Klaus in Umbrella Academy and playing an eccentric character, here he is a pretty thin character. Then you have Anna Fang. Talk about a great looking character but a very disappointing character. Kristen put it this way, she’s kind of supposed to be a Han Solo type character, but they don’t give her great lines to work with, and she does less than anything with them. She looks cool, maybe a little bit out of place, but that could be set-up with some better character development and story development, but that wasn’t there, and Jihae does nothing with it.

Now, not all the characters are bad. Hugo Weaving as the villain is amazing. His motivations aren’t fully developed, nor is his character, but he does a very good job with what he’s given. The real shame with his character is it’s death. It’s a cheap and not impactful death. I think you could argue that the point of it is to keep blood off of the main characters hands, but we already know that really isn’t something she’s worried about. So it feels weak and more like they hoped they could do another movie, but didn’t think that they’d be able to get Hugo Weaving again. Leila George has a smaller role in the film, but her part was interesting and she portrayed it well. I wish that we’d see more of her Katherine Valentine and Ronan Raftery who plays Bevis Pod with her. They were interesting characters that have the distinction of being the secondary characters who are more interesting than the main characters, which is too common is YA.

I’ve bashed this movie pretty hard. I think even with the characters who have some good development or are better acted, they aren’t given what they should have to work with in this film. I do want to knock one more thing, and that’s the weapon that is used in the movie. There are certain angles where that thing feels like a horrible mid 90’s green screen effect, not nearly as cool and polished as the rest of the world. That’s all I’m going to say about it, because I do want to jump into the visuals of the rest of the world which are amazing. The different vehicles all make sense as something that would be in the world. And while the Shanara Chronicles also do the future earth after something has happened, I think that the world of Mortal Engines is a whole lot cooler. The flying ships, the wall, and the general aesthetic of the world are cool, but the predator city is amazing, and the smaller vehicles are all slightly unique and you can see how they fit into the world. There’s are a level of dinginess in the world as well that works really well, and while you do get some Hunger Games vibes in the movie, they don’t lean into it too much.

There’s so much to explore visually and storywise in this world if someone were to do a good job of creating something cool, that it’s a shame this is the movie we got. And the movie did poorly in theaters, so we’re not going to get another one. Maybe fifteen years from now if the books have done well for Mortal Engines, we’ll get another crack at a move which will do better. There’s so much potential of the world that I want to see more of it. I don’t care that it seems to borrow from Shanara Chronicles, Hunger Games, Gurren Lagann, and Howl’s Moving Castle, and a lot more. There’s a chance for it to be unique, and I’d even read the books after having seen the movie in hopes that they are better and that I’ll get the story that I really want.

Overall Grade: C-
Critical Grade: B+ (Visuals), D (Story)
Fan Grade: C

Have you seen Mortal Engines, if so, what are your thoughts on it? Is it a movie you want to see if you haven’t seen it?

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