GOING BACK: Having played Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, D. Bethel has since gone back and played the first game in the Uncharted series and was rather frustrated by it. This experience got our hosts thinking about entering series (of games, movies, tv shows, etc.) mid-stream––what’s the value of going back to the start?
WEEK IN GEEK: Andrew braved populated movie theaters to see Ant-Man and the Wasp while D. Bethel eagerly went to the theaters to see Incredibles II.
DISNEY FLOOD: This summer was a packed house in terms of big-budget blockbuster-intended films with Avengers: Infinity War, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Incredibles II. But with Solo and Ant-Man and the Wasp underperforming, it has Andrew and D. wondering, did we have too many big nerd movies this summer?
RELATED LINKS:
Brad Bird defends his approach to animated films on Twitter:
With all due respect, it is NOT a “kids movie”. It is animated, and rated PG. https://t.co/a6tGzoWvzy
OBI-WAN KE-NOPE-Y: It was made known that Lucasfilm has put its anthology series, subtitled A Star Wars Story, on hold after the lower box office of The Last Jedi and, most recently, Solo. While the cause hasn’t been confirmed, there are a few factors to look at, one of which could be the box office performance of these films. Another, more sinister, reason has to do with the cultural backlash to Rogue One, The Last Jedi, and Solo. A segment on the internet is convinced that Lucasfilm has a political agenda it wants to push and it’s using the Star Wars series to do so. These dissenters have responded in a few interesting ways: some have banded together and made an official decree to “destroy” Lucasfilm, others have started a crowdfunding/social media campaign in order to remake The Last Jedi. Either way, it’s a complicated issue that Andrew and D. Bethel try to find the knots of.
RECYCLE, REDUCE, REUSE: This week, Andrew and D. discuss revisions that happen to works after they are released. From the canon-bending Star Wars re-releases from the late 1990s to the archival efforts of the Mega Man Legacy Collection, works are “preserved” in some form or another, but attention could (and should) be paid to the reasons for such preservation and re-release: is it in the interest of the creator? Of the owner? Of the audience? While they don’t generate any answers, our hosts certainly probe the topic for its diversity of impetus, goals, and cultural impact. Well, they do decide that pop culture needs some sort of library, but that’s about it.
THE LONG CON-TINUITY: After years of teasing the topic, Andrew and D. finally sit down to talk about continuity. It starts with the continuity issues surrounding Star Wars and Disney’s purge of their Extended Universe, before it descends into talk about its benefits, its setbacks, and why it can be used as a weapon.
RELATED LINKS:
The ending to St. Elsewhere (re: the reference to the “snow globe ending” in this episode, referring to the very end of the show, St. Elsewhere, where it was revealed that the show was actually just a fictional universe imagined by an autistic child):
WEEK IN GEEK: Both Andrew and D. Bethel saw Star Wars: The Last Jedi so––
THE LAST HOT TAKE: They bring in original Star Wars fan and friend of the show, Jason Tudor, to talk about Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the talk around the movie, and what it means for the franchise SPOILER ALERT––SIGNIFICANT PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED; BE SURE TO WATCH THE MOVIE BEFORE LISTENING.
RELATED EPISODES:
Episode 29 – Guitar Mode: Where Jason Tudor first appeared on the show to talk about military science fiction.
THE FORCE IS…EXPENSIVE?: With the hotly anticipated Star Wars: Battlefront II released recently, with it came a lot of controversy. It stands at the apex of a recent trend toward big-budget titles adopting monetizing tactics more commonly found in free-to-play mobile games, this time in the form of blind boxes aka loot boxes. Andrew and D. dive into this controversy and try to find the middle ground.
WEEK IN GEEK: Andrew talks about the premier of the new (and final) season of Star Wars: Rebels while D. Bethel talks about Netflix’s new based-on-a-true-story-kind-of David Fincher-led crime drama, Mindhunter.
SPOOKYTOBER: In celebration of the scariest month of the year, Andrew and D. discuss a movie each that really, truly gave them the scaries. Andrew discusses the cult classic, Jacob’s Ladder, while D. discusses the forgotten gothic horror of The Others.
RELATED EPISODES:
Episode 20 – “Hydra Healthcare”: A previous Spookytober episode where, in the discussion, D. and Andrew discuss the video games that scared or unsettled them.
Although old news for just about everybody, Lucasfilm released a new trailer for the upcoming film in the Star Wars franchise, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. [Note: Your guess is as good as mine as to how many colons belong in that title. I’ll leave that for Dan to determine at a later date.] As with any Marvel/Disney/Lucasfilm trailer, there’s a lot being packed into two minutes and thirty-four seconds. For those that missed it, here it is:
I’m not really here to make any major speculation or draw any conclusions from this trailer. As a lot of people on the internet have already pointed out, there is a significant amount of clever cutting and editing. Any conclusions that you may draw from the trailer are entirely speculative (unless your conclusion is, “These people are in this movie”).
However, there is one thing from the trailer that has also appeared in several other forms of advertising media that has turned a few heads and gotten a few people talking: Luke Skywalker in various stages of “looking like a bad guy.” In the trailer, some attentive fans have looked at 1:47, where a defeated (and wet?) Luke says, “This will not go the way you think.” Others have referenced 1:53, where a wet Rey confronts what appears to be Luke in his grimdark outfit. [Note: we’re not entirely sure what wetness has to do with it, but it may be important.]
Of course, a few seconds of a trailer never amounted to anything. Don’t worry, because Lucasfilm did not stop there. Shortly before the release of the trailer, Lucasfilm released the new poster for the movie. It features everything one would expect from a movie titled, “The Last Jedi.” All the characters locked in seemingly action poses. A couple of lightsabers. Lots of … red? Judge for yourself:
Apparently, the primary color being used here is “Sith Red.”
And let’s not forget about the IMAX Standee, also released last week.
Big movie requires big standee.
The standee, which is cleverly divided into “good guys” on the left and “bad guys” on the right, also happens to feature one character on both sides: our man Luke Skywalker, again. We could go on with this, but it’s just speculative absurdity at this point.
What does it all mean? Apparently, we’re meant to believe that Luke is playing both sides in this movie. Or not? It’s never really clear. Teasing the fanbase is something that Lucasfilm (or, more appropriately, Disney) has turned into a veritable art form and a standard operating procedure. At this point, the only thing we know for certain is that a lot of people are going to go see the new Star Wars movie in mid-December.
GOING BACK: Having played Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, D. Bethel has since gone back and played the first game in the Uncharted series and was rather frustrated by it. This experience got our hosts thinking about entering series (of games, movies, tv shows, etc.) mid-stream––what’s the value of going back to the start?
WEEK IN GEEK: Andrew sees the latest Star Wars Story, Solo, while D. Bethel gushes about the recent God of War reboot.
