Pixar Playlist #3 - Toy Story 2

Ladies and Gentlemen, whether you like it or not, the Pixar Playlist

Well, it didn’t take long to get to the first sequel but here we are with Toy Story 2. The success of Toy Story really sparked something, and because it’s Disney and around this point in their history, if a movie made any money, it got a direct-to-DVD sequel.

The deal with Disney was at this point revised to 5 movies in 5 original franchises, so Toy Story 2 wouldn’t count towards it. Production for this film was not easy, with tight deadlines and a sudden rush for it to be theatre quality as it was changed to get a theatrical release, not to mention them nearly deleting 90% of their assets and staff members working to the point of actually getting wrist problems did put a dampener of things.

Released in 1999, the film made a respectable $497m on it’s $90m budget and is one of those rare films with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so is it worth all that praise?

Well, yes and no, but I’ll get to that.

Netflix Retrospective - Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 5 Episodes 1-3

OK, we’ve got to season 5 and since I wrote the last retrospective, Voltron has become somewhat a subject of controversy for certain narrative decisions in its final 2 seasons. I will cover the particularly controversial elements in due course, my opinion is that they’re well-intentioned but badly thought through, particularly with the announcement in the marketing for season 7, something I’ll get to when I eventually cover season 7.

For now, though, we’re only on season 5 and there’s only 6 episodes to cover as once again, the season was split in half so they could put more releases out, let’s see how this half holds up.

RageLite review - Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

The game evolves for Sherlock Holmes as he plays the Game of Shadows

Sherlock Holmes proved a decent success for Warner Brothers, so naturally a sequel was inevitable, it was fast-tracked by the studio and was released in 2011. It was about as successful as the first one commercially but there was a slight drop in critical response, with a 60% rating on Rotten Tomatoes compared to the 70 the first one got? Where did this one go wrong? Did it go wrong? Here’s my take:

Young Adult Month: The Divergent Series: Allegiant

In the not too distant future, after a disaster takes place

A nerdy guy with Rage Issues, among the last of the human race

He was just a media nerd, he ranted a lot, it was quite absurd

But he was special for some reason, so bad men decided it was Rage Issues season

He’ll star in 3 movies, 4 if we squeeze him dry

He’ll go and join a rebel force, as he’ll slowly lose his mind

Now keep in mind, he’s just a guy, no different from you or me

So, he’ll have to learn how to survive, with the help of YA Movies

Franchise Roll call:

Hunger Games

Maze Runner

Diiiiiiiivergent

If you’re wondering how he posts his thoughts, and who he’s posting for

Repeat to yourself, it’s just a theme, and think about it no more

It’s Young Adult Month!

We come to the end of the road for the Divergent series: The Divergent Series: Allegiant

The Divergent movies had never been box office smashes, which makes the move of increasing their budget with each release perplexing to say the least, but here we are, Allegiant had a $140m budget at its disposal, given the box office returns of the other 2 films, it would struggle to break even if it matched them, and it didn’t. The film earned $170m at the box office, resulting in a net loss and the planned follow-up instalment to be tossed in the garbage. I know there were talks of TV movies and mini-series but the actors involved in the films didn’t care and these ideas have largely been scrapped now.

Here’s the weird thing though, usually when it comes to making a 2-part movie adaptation, you film them back-to-back with a joint budget to save costs then release them about a year apart to allow for editing. This movie wasn’t released like that, and you might argue there’s a reason for it. Anyway, the film was critically panned with a dismal 12% Rotten Tomatoes Rating with an average critical score of 4.1/10, audiences too seem to have had enough, giving it only a 41% audience score with an average of 3/5

I know I’ve been pretty detailed in my synopses anyway for this series, but again, major spoilers for both film and book, as I’ll try and summarise both.

Young Adult Month - The Divergent Series: Insurgent

In the not too distant future, after a disaster takes place

A nerdy guy with Rage Issues, among the last of the human race

He was just a media nerd, he ranted a lot, it was quite absurd

But he was special for some reason, so bad men decided it was Rage Issues season

He’ll star in 3 movies, 4 if we squeeze him dry

He’ll go and join a rebel force, as he’ll slowly lose his mind

Now keep in mind, he’s just a guy, no different from you or me

So, he’ll have to learn how to survive, with the help of YA Movies

Franchise Roll call:

Hunger Games

Maze Runner

Diiiiiiiivergent

If you’re wondering how he posts his thoughts, and who he’s posting for

Repeat to yourself, it’s just a theme, and think about it no more

It’s Young Adult Month!

Yay, we’re continuing with Divergent movies. I suppose I made it clear during the last one, but I’ll reiterate. The Divergent books are overlong and bloated with character choices that don’t make any sense. The plot rips off tropes from other, better books, and there’s nothing in this series that isn’t done better somewhere else. That said, the plot of the books is fairly solid and when they get the characters right, they get it right, the dialogue is another thing entirely.

But enough about that, this is the Divergent Series: Insurgent

Pre-production for this film had begun before the first film was even out, which allowed it to release only a year later. This implies Entertainment One clearly had confidence in the success of the first one, confidence that was rewarded to an extent with Box Office Receipts. The director of the first film was still working on that film, so it was announced the new director would be Robert Schwentke, the director of R.I.P.D. (oh god, that’s not good), who went on to produce Allegiant as well (great…) With a larger budget of $110 million to work with, the film was absolutely blasted by critics, gathering a meagre 28% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an 5/10 average score, and an audience rating of 58% with an average 3.5/5, it earned slightly more at the box office with $297.3m, but compared to the other two franchises, Hunger Games’ sequel made more than double that with only a slightly larger budget. The Scorch Trials made slightly more but on about half the budget. But to business, what is this film really like?

Young Adult Month - Divergent

In the not too distant future, after a disaster takes place

A nerdy guy with Rage Issues, among the last of the human race

He was just a media nerd, he ranted a lot, it was quite absurd

But he was special for some reason, so bad men decided it was Rage Issues season

He’ll star in 3 movies, 4 if we squeeze him dry

He’ll go and join a rebel force, as he’ll slowly lose his mind

Now keep in mind, he’s just a guy, no different from you or me

So, he’ll have to learn how to survive, with the help of YA Movies

Franchise Roll call

Hunger Games

Maze Runner

Diiiiiiiivergent

If you’re wondering how he posts his thoughts, and who he’s posting for

Repeat to yourself, it’s just a theme, and stop thinking any more

It’s Young Adult Month!

We’re apparently going in order of success as we enter the Divergent series

Divergent had 4 movies planned, but the 4^th movie was ultimately scrapped after the 3^rd one failed to deliver at the box office. I wish I could say I was disappointed but having read the books, all I have to say is that they are so f*cking boring!

Released in 2014, the movie made $288m on an $85m budget, making it less successful than the least successful Maze Runner movie. It’s not great news on the critical front either, with a 42% Rotten Tomatoes rating with an average score 5.4/10, but it did have an impact with audiences, with a 69% rating and 3.8/5 average score.

#2 - Batman: Arkham Origins (Reupload)

Not sure how this review ended up deleted but here's a reupload of it

Before I start, I want to clarify. Batman Arkham Origins is not a bad game, per-say. But in my honest opinion it’s an ok-good game that exists in a franchise where that’s not good enough.

A little background: games starring superheroes is a not a new franchise but until the Arkham games came out, none of them really felt right. From Superman getting easily beaten by basic weapons, to team games where everyone loses health every time they take a hit. Not to mention the complicated systems of combos and super-moves. There have been a few Batman games in the past, including a Batman Begins game and several based on Batman: The animated series. None of them felt quite right, partially being restricted by their respective franchise

Out of the shadows came Batman: Arkham Asylum. Boasting the writing talents of Paul Dini (writer of the award-winning Batman: The Animated Series episode Heart of Ice) and the voice actors Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and Arleen Sorkin, all veterans from Batman: The Animated series.  Unlike that said series. This was a much darker story, featuring the Joker committing on screen murder, dead bodies at every turn, and a far more gritty surroundings.

It was a huge success, it took (an element I hate in many games) and made it exciting, it took strategy, but not so much that it was highly complicated, and the surroundings were beautiful. Obviously a sequel was planned: Batman: Arkham City. Batman: Arkham City took everything that made Asylum great, tweaked it by adding new moves, gadgets and the like, and put onto an open world environment. The story, still penned (at least in part) by Paul Dini, and with return of most voice actors (with Tara Strong doing a good stand-in for Arleen Sorkin, and Mark Hamill reprising the Joker for what he said would be the last time, it wasn't the last time) Arkham City expanded on the roots of Arkham Asylum in all the right ways. It still looked lovely, was packed with references, and the story, while somewhat cluttered was a good one.

Lots of rumours had been going around as to what the third iteration of the Arkham franchise would be, with rumours of have a silver age backdrop and including heroes like Superman. In 2013 we received news that a new Batman: Arkham game would be released that year. Later, to many people’s disappointment, it was discovered that Rocksteady, who were the developers of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, would not be working on it (as they were still in the process of creating Batman: Arkham Knight) instead, the task fell to Warner Bros. Montreal, who did the Wii U adaptation of Arkham City. Furthering the disappointing news was the fact that they’d chosen a voice actor for Batman who wasn’t Kevin Conroy. Also of note was that Paul Dini was not working on the story for this game. Batman Arkham Origins would serve as a prequel, detailing the origins of key relationships in Batman’s mythos.

OK, that was a lot of backstory, so on with the review. Spoilers ahead