Hey Folks! I have been more or less taking the last several days off because I am technically on vacation. Due to the less-than-opportune placement of July 4th, I took off today and also largely checked out of doing blog posts late last week giving myself a bit of a vacation. This morning however I had to do some work really quickly and make sure that timecards were approved. So I thought that I might as well bang out a blog post because I have some things to talk about. More specifically I have watched quite a bit of movies and series of late, and thought I would give a bit of a round-up of some of my thoughts regarding them.
Nimona
I feel like all of you need to stop what you are doing right now and watch Nimona. It is available on Netflix, and if you don’t have access to Netflix… then pirate the fuck out of it because it is very good. If you are/were a fan of Lumberjanes or the most modern incarnation of She-Ra or pretty much anything else from ND Stevenson, then you are probably going to love this. If not… then you will probably still love this because it is exceptionally well-written. It is a story about trying to find your place in the world when that world often is diametrically opposed to your existence. It has a lot of things to say, but also… I want Nimona to be my sidekick. I had not been following the production mess that surrounded this property, but it sounds like it is a sheer miracle that this came out at all.
Very much a good film for the entire family as well. I highly suggest you check it out.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
First I feel like I have to say that I don’t hate Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The movie had problems and I feel like the whole aliens thing was pretty divisive, but for me most of the problems with that movie came from the fact that it looked wrong. We were still in the era of CGI “all the things”, and it looked it… and now I feel like we realize what we lost during the CGI boom years… and folks go out of their way to make things feel like practical effects even when they may not be. Dial of Destiny harkens back to the era of Last Crusade, and while it is still maybe a bit busy and a little bit less about bringing the audience along for the hunt, it feels more grounded in at least imagined reality.
I think what I like the most about this movie is that it serves as a nice bookend for the entire series. Indy is still punching Nazis and still chasing objects of tremendous power but is very much a man out of time. He doesn’t really fit into the world of the moon landing, but no longer has the vim and vigor to really keep chasing forbidden treasure. Dial of Destiny serves as a great last hurrah for Indiana Jones and hopefully can put the character to bed on a good note. If this series continues, it needs to continue in the hands of someone other than Indy, and at most him serving as a supporting character. He has had his curtain call, and I feel satisfied with this movie being the last stanza.
The Flash
I am not going to spend much time talking about what a seeming shithole of a human being Ezra Miller has turned out to be. I don’t really care much about the current state of the DC Universe. I’ve watched the various movies, and enjoyed them enough to keep watching them… but also never really felt the love for them that I have in the MCU. I was mostly interested in this film as it serves to give a last hurrah to “my Batman” aka Michael Keaton. What I was not expecting was to enjoy the film as a whole anywhere near as much as I did. I’ve always sort of hated Ezra Miller’s version of Barry Allen. I found the character annoying as shit and extremely abrasive… and this movie goes a long way to resolving that problem and shows reach growth of the character.
Michael Keaton as Batman and Sasha Calle as Kara Zor-El were both phenomenal. The two different Barry Allens though… felt almost like watching two different actors in the same way as you do when Tatiana Maslany plays dozens of unique characters in Orphan Black. The only disappointment in the movie though is the fact that I expected something that just simply was not there. Knowing that the DCU is being rebooted… I expected this movie to play more into that fact. There were a lot of deep cuts showing alternate timelines like the Nick Cage Superman… but the entire thing wraps up in a very weird note that makes me question what this means for everything that comes forward. It doesn’t so much give the current DCU one last send-off as much as it just deeply muddies the waters. It is still a good film but I would probably suggest waiting for it to release on streaming before you watch it.
The Witcher Season 3 Part 1
Unfortunately, Netflix has realized the error of its ways when it comes to releasing episodes… and has begun awkwardly cleaving a series in half so that they can have two different epic premiere dates. This weekend the first part of The Witcher Season 3 dropped, and with it comes the first five episodes that end on a bit of a cliffhanger. I have a lot of issues with this show… not the least of which is the fact that Henry Cavil will be moving on from the series after this season. I get WHY he would want to leave however because the showrunners and writers are needlessly fucking with details constantly. The Witcher is one of those shows that is good… so long as you know nothing about the supporting material. It reminds me of my early experience with the Harry Dresden series prior to reading the novels. I thought it was pretty good… until I actually read the books and then suddenly got annoyed at the weird inconsistencies.
I think what bothers me the most about The Witcher series, is the fact that entire scenes have been lifted from whole cloth from either the books or the games… but little details have been fucked with for no apparent reason. The worst of this is the way that they are suddenly changing the entire personality and motivation of different characters. I am sorry folks… but they did Eskel dirty last season… and this season they are making some truly bizarre fucking choices with Radovid. The series version of Djikstra is fucking heinous as well and is nowhere near as compelling of a character. Basically, the show feels sloppy, and that is maybe the worst thing a show based off course material can be. The only reason why I kept watching is that they’ve at least nailed the pivotal characters of Geralt, Ciri, Yennifer, and Dandelion/Jaskier. The source material is so fucking strong… that it just infuriates me that the folks writing this show seem determined to sloppily copy the original homework.
Final Thoughts
I cannot understate how much I enjoyed seeing the Keaton Batman ride again. Have you seen any of the media that I talked about? What were your thoughts? What things did I completely miss? I’ve tried to keep everything spoiler free because I do think that everything was worth watching at least once. Again I highly suggest that everyone stream Nimona because it was so freaking good.
The post Recent Media Round-Up appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Friends, it is time for a bit of real talk before I get into the podcast show notes. We had a discussion last night about whether or not we should talk about the horrific Blizzard situation on the show. I’ve made my comments pretty clear on my blog, but it also sorta felt gross and weird to engage in a conversation without anyone other than cisgender men. Real-world emergencies deprived us of both Ammo and Grace last night, and I hope both of those situations got better. It might come up again in the coming weeks but only if everyone on the show is up for talking about it.
As far as the topics we did discuss we talked a bit about Monster Hunter Stories 2 on the Nintendo Switch and how I apparently completely misunderstand the genre of that game. Tam talks a bit about returning to Star Trek Online years later and the pattern of play that the game has fallen into. We also go down a list of games that have quietly been holding on with a steady player base but get very little fanfare. Kodra talks about his experience streaming Celeste and invites everyone to participate in those streams. We close out the show with a discussion about Cyberpunk 2077 because Tam decided to give it a shot and Bel feels at least partially vindicated. It is a mixed bag of a game but an extremely interesting one.
Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Tonight I completely butcher the intro because my co-hosts decided to get clever with it. Tonight we talk about a lot of stuff that is coming out ahead of E3… which in truth is the only time that matters given that the only people who care about the actual show are the ones attending in person. We talk about the Google Stadia presser and Destiny 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3 news that came out of it. We talk about the only thing from EA that matters… the progressively less vaporware Jedi Fallen Order. We talk the weird case of the Magic the Gathering Animated Series and then on to Pokemon Goodest Boy Edition. Lastly a brief topic about how Ubisoft is dumb.
Tonight we are down a few people and have a fairly scattered show where we cover a bunch of topics… but none of them super deeply? You can tell we were all somewhat out of it because while editing the podcast there were a bunch of really lengthy pauses. Tonight Bel rails in the Elder Scrolls Patcher apparently being blocked by various ISPs including his. He also talks a bit about the Destiny 2 Dawning Event and making questionable baked goods. Thalen talks a bit about the FFXIV Starlight Celebration event.
Bel spins up a topic from his blog about the seeming return to NDA restricted games testing. Thalen talks about Return of the Obra Dinn, and Kodra a bit about Gris. We discuss the topic that has bounced around a bit on the significance of going Left in video games. There is some brief discussion about Artifact and how it is trying to right the ship… and some of the MTG Finance speculation that came into that market quickly that is super angry about the price crash. Finally we talk a bit about Starfinder and Pathfinder in general and the lack of really good ready made third party modules.
