Action Archives - Page 2 Of 4

December 11, 2020

“The Falcon And The Winter Soldier” 1st Trailer Review!

A number of Marvel fans have been worried – understandably, to some extent – that the big budgets for the upcoming slate of Marvel Disney+ series won’t be enough to keep the shows from looking “too TV”, by which I assume they mean cheap and small-scale. The first trailer for WandaVision, which some viewers didn’t understand was intentionally aiming to replicate the low-budget practicality of classic sitcoms, only underscored those fears. But if nothing else, the first trailer for The Falcon And The Winter Soldier should be enough to convince even the most skeptical critic that these series will maintain a high level of quality, and cinematic visuals of which most movies would be lucky to boast.

The Falcon And The Winter Soldier feels the most like a traditional Marvel action movie out of all the Disney+ series we’ve heard about so far, but that’s not a knock on the series by any means. Rather, it feels like a continuation of the very best Marvel movies, specifically the latter two installments in the Captain America trilogy – as it should, since it follows Cap’s sidekicks in the aftermath of his surprise retirement and decision to pass the torch (or, well, the shield) to his longtime friend Sam Wilson. The fight scenes are fast-paced, tightly-edited, and visceral; the tone is that of an atmospheric spy thriller, with some natural buddy cop humor; and the characters are heroes we’ve grown to love – Wilson’s Falcon and Bucky Barnes’ Winter Soldier.

From what we’ve heard, the main conflict of The Falcon And The Winter Soldier revolves around a plot to usurp Wilson, a Black man, as the rightful owner of the shield and the new Captain America, by replacing him with a jingoistic white southern guy named John Walker. However, the trailer is still hiding many details pertaining to that storyline, and instead devotes significant screentime to a completely new supervillain played by Solo actress Erin Kellyman – whom we see sporting a black mask marked with a red handprint, and leading a team of ruffians, believed to be the anarchist militia group known as Flag-Smasher. It’s possible Kellyman’s character is also using the name Flag-Smasher as her supervillain identity: in the comics, this character is male, and a frequent opponent of Captain America, who represents everything he most despises. John Walker, on the other hand, appears just once in the entire trailer: making his debut at a hometown football game, to thunderous applause.

That being said, there’s no reason to fear that the series’ extremely political through-line has been watered down to avoid controversy: Falcon’s first line in the trailer addresses how the legacy of Captain America’s shield is “complicated”, an obvious reference to the storyline in the comics – which the show is believed to feature prominently – where an early and dangerous prototype of the Super Soldier serum was tested on Black men during World War II by racist doctors, mirroring the real-life horrors of the infamous Tuskegee “Study”, during which African-American men were subjected to syphilis and denied treatment even after it became available. Just as Loki is venturing into the realm of historical fiction, it seems The Falcon And The Winter Soldier will do the same, including important social commentary on issues of racism, white supremacy, and white privilege.

The trailer’s second biggest reveal has to be our first look at the island of Madripoor, a fictional nation located in the Indian Ocean and home to frequent battles between Marvel’s most notable heroes and villains in the comics. The Falcon And The Winter Soldier makes it looks very futuristic, a bit like Cyberpunk 2077‘s Night City, with a dark and mysterious criminal underworld supporting towering skyscrapers and hotels. Wilson and Barnes’ business in Madripoor is still unknown, but they appear to be undercover – probably hunting an enemy or looking to strike a deal with somebody shady. To fit in with Madripoor’s clubbing scene, it seems Wilson has a brand new outfit, including a bright red jacket with golden tracery that we’ve seen in set photos, but which looks even better under proper lighting. Bucky’s idea of a disguise is a basic haircut (which, to be fair, looks pretty decent now); at least Wilson has some style.

The action set-pieces are to die for (and I assume that, in a series as gritty as this one looks to be, lots of characters will die): we’ve got motorcycle chases, fights on top of trucks, brutal one-on-one duels, and plenty of high-flying stunts thanks to Falcon’s trusty pair of wings, which look more fast and flexible than ever before. To tell the truth, I’ve always thought Falcon’s wings looked cumbersome in past Marvel appearances – so whether he’s actually tinkered with the suit to produce better results, or if the CGI is just better, this is definitely an upgrade. Bucky’s vibranium arm, courtesy of Wakanda, is still…just an arm: I hope we get to see some of its other cool features at some point, because Wakandan tech is usually a lot more reliable.

Suffice it to say, there’s a lot of stuff I think is still being kept from us, and this first look is just the tip of the iceberg. The Falcon And The Winter Soldier will premiere in March, leaving plenty of time for us to get another trailer, presumably while WandaVision is still airing.

Trailer Rating: 8/10

March 21, 2020

“The Letter For The King” Review!

Considering that I went into The Letter For The King expecting to be bored out of my mind, I was actually quite pleasantly surprised with what I got: which, indeed, is mostly a blend of various tired fantasy tropes and scenes or even entire characters plucked straight from other, better, works of art, but also has just enough new – or mostly new – content to distance itself from the pack.

Based on an obscure Dutch fantasy novel from the 1960’s, The Letter For The King simply doesn’t have the name recognition that would enable it to jump into the midst of Netflix’s crowded schedule with a built-in fanbase. In English-speaking countries, there wasn’t even a proper translation of the novel until a few years ago. So it’s unsurprising that the six-part series has to look for inspiration elsewhere: almost the entire plot is comprised of original content, and almost all of that original content is…shall we say, lifted, from fantasy books, films and TV series as wide-ranging as The Lord Of The Rings, Game Of Thrones, The Witcher, The Chronicles Of Prydain and Starlight. The latter two, with their largely simplistic worlds, basic magic systems, and archetypal characters, are by far the most obvious source material – even with Lord Of The Rings trilogy production designer Ra Vincent working behind the scenes, The Letter For The King still looks and feels like a small-scale children’s fable (and that’s not a criticism of Prydain or Starlight, by the way: both are fabulous) that might have attracted more attention if it had been released fifteen years ago, when studios were trying desperately to replicate the success of The Lord Of The Rings by using as little money and effort as possible. These days, as the hunt for the next Game Of Thrones heats up, The Letter For The King, with its antiquated fairytale style and low stakes, has little chance of being an underdog champion like its protagonist, Tiuri (alternately pronounced “Tiuri” or “Churri” – I doubt it was intentional, but the constantly changing pronunciations of his name often reminded me of a similar problem in Ralph Bakshi’s cult classic The Lord Of The Rings, where the villain Saruman’s name was changed halfway through production to “Aruman”, leading to a perplexing continuity error).

Oftentimes, adaptations of fantasy and sci-fi literature fail because they try to excessively build their worlds rather than doing the same with their characters or plot: cramming detail and deep lore into every inch of your expansive world is certainly much more fun than patching up plot-holes or charting character arcs, but if done incorrectly, it can bog down a film or TV series within minutes, as the audience struggles to catch up with a constant flow of place names, history lessons and nonsensical exposition dumps. The Letter For The King somehow does the exact opposite and still runs into a problem: because it does the bare minimum to flesh out its world (for example, the world actually has no name: its simply referred to as “three kingdoms”), it ends up looking like any of a thousand generic fantasy worlds – a sprinkling of vague magic, Medieval European societies dotting a map, and an obligatory Chosen One prophecy.

But once it becomes apparent that this is a problem (about five minutes in, I think?), the show starts hurling things at you that give the impression of depth: specifically, actors from other fantasy franchises. David Wenham, who portrayed Faramir, the young, idealistic son of a stern and demanding father, in The Lord Of The Rings, has here been upgraded to playing the stern and demanding father of a young, idealistic son (and make no mistake: he does a fantastic job of it). Andy Serkis, whose revolutionary motion-capture performance as the creature Gollum earned him worldwide renown, here delights in a brief cameo as an actual human being: something of a mix between the Master of Lake-town from The Hobbit and Capricorn, the villain of Inkheart (who, coincidentally, was also portrayed by Serkis in the film adaptation of that novel). Serkis’ daughter Ruby Ashbourne Serkis also shares the screen with him, playing his character’s daughter Lavinia, and then goes on to become the female lead of the series – her acting career is off to a good start, judging by the strength of her performance here. And in a very smart move, Kim Bodnia plays the sword-fighting abbot of the monastery at the edge of the world: Bodnia will portray the Witcher Vesemir in The Witcher‘s second season, and this is a tantalizing first look at what he could do in that role – Witcher fans would be smart to check out his fighting and acting skills here, and simultaneously give The Letter To The King some much-needed views.

Because despite being derivative, the series actually does have quite a lot of strong elements: especially if you’re into the more romanticized, outdated style of fantasy that was popular throughout the middle of the 20th Century. It has charm, for one thing – the series is TV-PG and family-friendly: a welcome break from The Witcher‘s gothic horror and Game Of Thrones‘ vicious brutality. And the core cast of characters are all fairly well developed: Tiuri, played by Amir Wilson, isn’t exactly a memorable hero, but he’s also not quite as dull as Starlight‘s Tristan or Prydain‘s Taran (what’s with all the T names, may I ask?). His character also has interesting things to say regarding the racial dynamics in his world – none of which ever actually get said, but still exist in subtext. Thaddea Graham’s hardened rogue Iona evolves into an Arya Stark prodigy (her final scene in the series actually seems to direct imitate one of Arya’s memorable scenes with The Hound from Game Of Thrones, season 8). Jussipo, initially one of the most annoying characters in the series, quickly shows his true colors as a delightfully smarmy, wickedly sarcastic bard. And along with gender and racial diversity, there’s even some surprising LGBTQ+ representation among the main cast – which, after all the recent queer-baiting from other studios, deserves a round of applause for how direct and straightforward it is.

Any good fantasy needs a good villain – a Cersei Lannister, a Smaug, a wicked old witch. The Letter For The King has an up-and-down relationship with its villain, Gijs Blom’s raven-haired goth necromancer Viridian: first it depicts him as a cartoonishly callous sadist without any moral complexity; then it tries to turn the tables on our heroes and reveal Viridian’s noble purpose, which actually works until said noble purpose turns out to be thinly-veiled racism; then it underutilizes him in its own finale before turning him into an overpowered Morgoth knock-off.

Speaking of which, we have to talk about the series’ poor use of action. Action, in a fantasy series, is something of a given: even if its special effects wizardry, you need some sort of action. The Letter For The King, being almost exclusively the story of Tiuri intercepting an incriminating letter from Viridian and trying to deliver it to a neighboring nation’s king, relies heavily on horseback fight and chase scenes. Now, these are easy to do right, with the help of a good cinematographer: in The Lord Of The Rings, Arwen and Frodo’s flight to the fords of Bruinen is a thrilling, suspenseful sequence where horses interlace between trees in a graceful, dangerous dance while Howard Shore’s score wails hauntingly in the background. Unfortunately, the thousands of horse chases in this series never once come close to paralleling that one epic scene, no matter how many times they pan over beautiful landscapes: the music accompanying these scenes is unmemorable, while the cinematography is questionable – mounting a camera on a horse’s head probably seemed like a good idea to make one chase scene more realistic, but did no one stop to consider that it takes the viewer out of the world completely?

It’s the same situation with the special effects budget. Most of the CGI seems to have been used up on Viridian’s finale transformation, meaning that throughout the rest of the series there’s just a bunch of patchy fire and smoke effects and one truly horrific CGI castle wall in the city of Unauwen – which was made doubly inexcusable because of how many times the city was made out to look like Game Of Thrones‘ Winterfell from afar, despite the fact that the one is a mess of bad special effects and the other was an almost entirely practical set.

So is The Letter For The King a must-see? Not by any means. But while we’re all self-quarantining, I don’t know if we’ve got any better options right now. And it’s actually not that bad. Pretty bad? Yeah, just a little. Game Of Thrones season 8 bad? No. Not even close.

Series Rating: 6/10

March 20, 2020March 20, 2020

“The Clone Wars” Season 7, Episode 5 Review!

Not a whole lot actually happens in the fifth episode of The Clone Wars, and the Clone Wars themselves might as well be background noise barely audible over the clamor of Coruscant’s criminal underworld, but that doesn’t make this episode forgettable or weak. How could it be, when it features the long (and I mean long) awaited return of fan-favorite Ahsoka Tano?

After the turbulent events that caused Ahsoka Tano (voiced once again by Ashley Eckstein) to abandon the Jedi Order, the former Clone Wars commander and optimistic padawan has found herself living a miserable life in the depths of Coruscant’s lower levels, where she operates a malfunctioning speeder bike – a far cry from the days when she piloted entire fleets of Republic warriors. In this small-scale episode, Tano teams up with the Martez sisters, Trace (Brigitte Kali) and Rafa (Elizabeth Rodriguez), two struggling mechanics trying to navigate a dangerous world of smugglers, crime bosses and villains, after crash-landing into their repair shop.

Ahsoka Tano The Clone Wars — collider.com

The episode gives us a great opportunity to see the Clone Wars through the eyes of the ordinary civilians whose lives have been affected by it: Ahsoka soon discovers that Trace and Rafa, for instance, are no fans of the Jedi Order. In their eyes (and, clearly, in the eyes of many), the Jedi are a brutal police force responsible for most of the galaxy’s wars and problems. Ahsoka was already undercover and on the run from her past, but the revelation that her new friends would view her as a murderer and warmonger if they knew her true identity only adds to the insane amount of pressure on her shoulders.

Ahsoka has always been one of The Clone Wars‘ most brilliant fighters, so it’s a bit of a shame that she only gets one action sequence in this episode – and it’s both brief and one-sided. Much more notable is her vague comment about having learned these exceptional martial arts skills from her “older brother”, which will bring to mind happier times when Ahsoka used to be Anakin Skywalker’s young, inexperienced apprentice. She’s come a long way, and her journey is still only just beginning.

There are no noteworthy spoilers from this episode. Of course, there’s a little bit of conflict – and a couple of fun moments where Ahsoka has to find ways to explain her profound knowledge of droid warfare that don’t include any mention of her once being a military leader – but other than that there’s not much to say about this charming little interlude in the final chapter of the Clone Wars. I would definitely have appreciated a couple of cameos from some of Coruscant’s most notable scum, such as the ex-Sith antiheroine Asajj Ventress or even Cadmus Bane and company.

Overall, however, Ashoka Tano’s return is a win, maybe because the episode is so much smaller in scale than what we’re used to, and so much more introspective and quiet. That reflects how Ahsoka has changed since we saw her choose to leave the Jedi Order because she could no longer trust them to do the right thing: she’s quieter, more reserved, and less outgoing and exuberant than she was when she believed in a higher purpose. On her own, fighting for herself and with no faith to turn to, she’s still figuring out who she is. Maybe next week’s episode will give us a clearer insight into what that might be.

What did you think of the fifth episode of The Clone Wars? What do you want Ahsoka to do next? Share your own thoughts, theories and opinions in the comments below!

Episode Rating: 5.8/10

December 6, 2019

“The Mandalorian: Chapter 5” Review!

After four episodes of waiting impatiently for Ming-Na Wen to arrive onscreen in The Mandalorian, she’s finally here – in a big way. This episode is her’s just as much as it is Baby Yoda’s. In fact, even old Mando himself manages to make a decent case for why he should still be considered the protagonist of the show named after himself. I know, it’s all a bit shocking.

The fifth chapter of the hit streaming show, fittingly titled The Gunslinger, brings Mando and Baby Yoda to the familiar planet of Tatooine after their ship is damaged in a shootout at the beginning of the episode. Amateur bounty hunter Toro Calican (Jake Cannavale) enlists Mando’s help on a difficult mission while mechanic Peli Motto (Amy Sedaris) humorously parents the intergalactic infant superstar Baby Yoda. While I went into this episode more than slightly worried about the show’s slow-pacing and meandering storyline, I emerged with a renewed optimism regarding the final three episodes. Chapter 5 still goes off on a tangent and leads our heroes into a side-quest, but it also introduces a couple of new concepts and characters that, hopefully, are destined to stick around for a while longer and have some purpose in the plot (the pilot episode’s killer droid IG-11 and last week’s kind-hearted mercenary Cara Dune, while heavily promoted in the show’s marketing, have still only appeared in one episode each).

This episode also leans heavily on fanservice and callbacks – from the sparkly, unrealistic explosions in the opening dogfight, strongly reminiscent of A New Hope‘s pyrotechnics; to the setting on the iconic desert planet of Tatooine, and the appearance of Tusken Raiders, the Mos Eisley cantina, and pit droids. But director Dave Filoni has put a fun new spin on each of these elements (with the exception of the cantina, which is underutilized: we’ve seen so many space pubs in Star Wars by this point that the darkly-lit lair is hardly unique anymore, especially without Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes providing alien jazz). Toro Calican even dresses like Han Solo and sits in the very same booth as him, with his legs stretched across the table in Solo’s classic style – but don’t fear: Calican, despite also being a Corellian mercenary, proves himself to be a radically different character in the episode’s final minutes.

Speaking of which, we now have to talk about SPOILERS. You’ve been warned!

"The Mandalorian: Chapter 5" Review! 2 — comicbookmovie.com

The big surprise in this episode is Ming-Na Wen’s appearance as fearsome assassin and former Hutt employee Fennec Shand, who is on the run in the deserts of Tatooine. Considering the way that the locals seem to have dealt with the stormtrooper threat, by mounting their heads on pikes in the streets of Mos Eisley, it’s understandable why she’d want to make a getaway. But she’s not able to escape before Calican and The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) come after her: Calican for fame, Mando for money. Though they capture her after a brief fight (which is, unfortunately, set in the middle of the night, making it hard to appreciate Wen’s real martial arts prowess), it’s not the end of her story. After trying to get Calican to free her from her shackles in exchange for her help in killing Mando and stealing his expensive suit of beskar steel armor, and then getting shot for her efforts, Shand is left supposedly dead in the desert, while Calican takes her advice and lays a trap for Mando, even going so far as to try and kidnap Baby Yoda in a heart-wrenching moment of terror. But while Calican is now dead dead (don’t ever mess with the enraged single father of a celebrity baby), Shand is possibly alive to fight another day: The Gunslinger‘s final scene shows a mysterious, cloaked character wearing metal spurs approaching her body. Who is it? We have no idea yet, but this mystery will hopefully be explained soon: as for whether Shand is still alive, we can only hope and pray. Her character, and Wen’s excellent performance, is already a series highlight.

And the Mandalorian himself? You know the drill by this point: he fixes his ship, and takes off for a destination to be determined next week. Baby Yoda is unharmed after the…sixth? seventh?…attempt on his life, but continues to be absolutely adorable. But for whatever reason, I’m willing to excuse the fact that this is the fourth episode in a row to end this way – Filoni’s direction, and the subtle hints and teases of another emerging storyline, have me feeling intrigued about Mando’s next destination, and what host of enemies and one-and-off allies he’ll find there. I think it’s about time we caught another glimpse of Werner Herzog’s antagonistic character, or ran into some Imperial survivors who might know something about Baby Yoda’s true identity, and why the Empire wants him so badly. Remember, that story was supposed to be this show’s throughline, once upon a time. We’ve all been so distracted by Baby Yoda memes, I think we’ve forgotten this thing has a plot.

As long as it has Ming-Na Wen, though, I’m happy.

What did you think of the episode? Share your own thoughts, theories and opinions in the comments below!

Episode Rating: 8/10