Netflix Retrospective: Daredevil season 1 episodes 10-13 review

TV Retrospective: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes season 2 episodes 6-10

Guilty Pleasures #21 - Looney Tunes Back in Action

Studio intervention is often the undoing what could’ve been great films. It’s more common that you might think in movies, both the Spider-man movies that lead to the respective reboots both had issues with studio intervention.

And we’ve got another example of what might’ve been a successful movie buried under studio interference with Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Originally a sequel to Space Jam (which may or may not still be in the works) but after Michael Jordan said he wouldn’t do another and after a failed attempt to get Jackie Chan (god knows what that movie would’ve looked like) the project underwent numerous delays.

So they tried to offer the directing role to Joe Dante, a guy who had had success with movies like Gremlins (which had some background from an episode of Looney Tunes) and his original idea, which was a period piece centred around Chuck Jones, was rejected as they wanted to continue with a Space Jam theme

Years later (presumably having given up on that idea) they gave him Back in Action. He wanted a movie that was a better representative of what the Looney Tunes were actually like, feeling they were poorly represented in Space Jam (and they were) and as a tribute piece to the late Chuck Jones

But after the reading the script, Warner Bros weren’t happy. Joe Dante, whose popularity had become more cult-following than mass market by this point, remarks the production ‘the longest year and a half of his life’ because of the lack of freedom from the studio and the beginning, middle and end are all different from his initial concepts.

And the movie was a colossal disaster, an $80m budget wasn’t made, and there’s sources claiming that production costs including marketing ballooned to a massive $150m. The movie made $68.5m with reviews giving mostly average scores, with both praise and criticism rather more muted than you'd see for most films. This lead to WB desperate trying to re-envision the franchise with things Loonatics Unleashed (a widely hated superhero version of the Looney Tunes – I personally think that it’s better once they decide to Zadavia an actual personality, around the finale of season 1 but its mediocre overall)

But I’m here to judge the movie in my own opinion, so let’s take a look

Netflix Retrospective: Daredevil season 1 episodes 7-9

TV Retrospective: The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes season 2 episodes 1-5

The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes was renewed for a second season, but we’re starting to look into the Disney era of Marvel so let’s throw in as many characters as possible into this.

But with well enough written stories that isn’t necessarily a problem. Christopher Yost is still on the writing team and most of his work in animation is pretty good (Thor: The Dark World, we’ll get to maybe)

We’ve had a few hints of coming stories: the Kree, the Masters of Evil still being out there, the Skrulls, Kang’s warning etc.

So what does season 2 have to offer? let’s take a look

Guilty Pleasures #20 - Space Jam

OK, I’ll get this out of the way, I love the Looney Tunes, I love their witty dialogue, great comedy and a story filled into a less than 10-minute short.  Looney Tunes is a classic beloved by people over the world and most episodes rely on fairly simple plot-lines. So what happens when you try and stretch that into a 90 minute movie? Can you capture the essence of the Looney Tunes in that sort of time period?

The answer is… sort of… kinda… not entirely. In the 1990s Nike (amongst others) ran a set of commercials featuring Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny. Jordan’s agent approached Warner Bros with the idea of essentially doing a feature length version of such a commercial, paying homage to lots of classic Looney Tunes and helping to boost the waning popularity of Michael Jordan.

So, 2 months filming and a year’s production later we get Space Jam. It made $230m on it’s $90m budget, making it a financial success however critics were less kind to it, it currently holds a 35% rating on rotten tomatoes.

So… It’s been years since I last saw this movie, how does it hold up? Let’s take a look.

Netflix Retrospective: Daredevil Season 1 episodes 4-6

#25 Secret Agent Clank

Why do I always seem to be 5 out? Anyway this our 205th review

What, no banner? Oh...

Those of you who have followed me since my first review know that I love Ratchet and Clank, I love their colourful environments, inventive weaponry, creative storytelling and the overall fun you get out of playing them.

But like with every good franchise, there’s a black sheep in the family and that comes in the form of a title called Secret Agent Clank.

So, what’s history behind this infamous title? Sony, the owner of the rights to Ratchet and Clank wanted a Ratchet title for their fledgling console, the PSVita, however Insomniac Games, the usual Ratchet and Clank developers were busy working on the Ratchet and Resistance titles for the PS3. So the job was given to a company called High Impact Games. The company was made up of former employees of Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog so it would seem like the ideal company to make such a game, and they did with Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters. It was a fun game in single player and also had a decent multiplayer mode but they had a second Ratchet and Clank title in the works.

Secret Agent Clank was released in 2008 to a decent, if slightly more mixed  reaction. So why do I hate it? Let’s take a closer look.

Netflix Retrospective: Daredevil Season 1 episodes 1-3

It’s time for the first ever Netflix Retrospective

And yes I know it was due like 6 weeks ago, I’m sorry, I got caught up playing Arkham Knight. But to make up for it I’m doing an episode by episode retrospective as opposed to a full series one as I was planning to.

So, let’s sit back and enjoy the first 3 episode of Marvel’s (god I hate putting that bit in, which is why I usually leave it out) Daredevil. Unlike a lot of retrospectives I’m going to give afterthoughts on the episodes rather than just riffing on them.

TV Retrospective: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes season 1 episodes 21-26

Guilty Pleasures #19 - Batman Forever

Ah, it’s been a while since we’ve looked at a live action Batman movie, so let’s continue from where we left off and examine an interesting piece known as Batman Forever.

Batman returns, whilst making money at the box office didn’t succeed commercially, partially I think down to the fact that it did everything in its power not to be suitable for kids other than swearing. So Tim Burton got booted down to producer and Warner Bros. hired a new director, Joel Schumacher.

Yeah, I’ll join the bandwagon of Schumacher bashing when I get to Batman and Robin. Or possibly during this review. Warner Bros wanted a more mainstream Batman movie, Keaton decided to depart after disagreeing with the changes and Val Kilmer was hired and as far as I can tell it was almost immediate and Kilmer had no idea what he was signing on for.

Whilst Burton pandered to the very early days of comics, the very, very, very early days, Schumacher was more in favour of style like the Adam West Batman show so cue puns, cheese and general good times right? Let’s just dive in

4 Issue Test #6 - Kanan: The Last Padawan

You’ve seen in my past reviews that I am a fan of the Star Wars animated series Star Wars Rebels, focusing on a rag-tag group of heroes fighting the empire and forming a rebellion. The character that seems to have the deepest history is Kanan, a former Jedi padawan himself who in a particular episode hinted at having a much darker history.

It’s in this comic where that history is to be explored. Written by former producer of the series and a guy who I have showered with praise before: Greg Weisman. This comic has a strong team behind it, so let’s dig in and see what we’ve got here.