Is there any hope for the new Star Wars films?

Will the new Star Wars films be any good?

The new Star Wars trilogy is being made at the moment and many were excited to hear that the first film of the trilogy will be called  'The Force Awakens' and has now finished being filmed.

 

There are also high hopes that director JJ Abrams will do for Star Wars what he did for Star Trek with his 2009 reboot of that franchise.  The terrible Star Wars prequels with their dull scripts, lack of acting by the main characters, and disturbing resemblance of a second-rate computer game were a huge disappointment for many fans of the original trilogy, so many are pessimistic about Star Wars 7.  

Here is a review of the prequels:

Another worrying thing about the new film is that the beloved cast of the original trilogy will be in it.  This is disturbing as if they are treated in the one-dimensional, simplistic manner that Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi were in the prequels, it can only mean serious disappointment for fans.  Remember in Alien 3 when the popular character Hicks and Newt were killed off at the beginning of the film?  This angered many fans of that franchise and had people regarding Alien 3 as one of the worst sequels ever made, terminally ruining the franchise.  However, other fans praised the bold direction of the film in killing off beloved characters in such a meaningless fashion, so maybe those sociopathic people will be pleased if Star Wars 7 does the same with Han, Leia, Luke, Chewbacca and Lando.  

As with the Star Wars prequels, there were many comics produced by Dark Horse Comics that told stories of the time before the original trilogy in the Star Wars Universe, and these turned out to be superior stories than those presented in the Prequel trilogy. 

 Dark Horse also produced many superior comic stories for the Alien and Predator franchises, so maybe the producers of films could look at these stories and make films of them rather than come up with half-baked, dumbed down, one-dimensional plot lines in order to make money from die hard cultist fans of their older work.

       

Another option for the new trilogy could have been to film the much-praised Timothy Zahn novels of the 1990s.  These books featured well-rounded characterisation and an interesting villain, Grand Admiral Thrawn.  However, one can see that George Lucas does not care about licensing his product to other companies, letting them write a story using his characters, that the fans then take as canon, and then disregarding it and making his own inferior product when it suits him to.

We sincerely hope that Star Wars 7 puts the series back on track and is not a repeat exercise of the awful, soulless prequels.  Here is a picture of actor Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) on set: 

Is Hollywood running out of ideas?

Is Hollywood turning stale?

In recent times it seems that the film industry in Hollywood has done nothing but regurgitate old plot lines, or remake old films that did financially well or were considered cult classics.

 Examples of this recently are the new Dracula film 'Dracula Untold' which according to critic consensus on film site rottentomatoes.com is "Neither awful enough to suck, nor sharp enough to bite, Dracula Untold misses the point of its iconic character's deathless appeal." 

This film re-treads the story of Vlad Dracula's relationship with his wife as was told in the 1992 film 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' starring Gary Oldman. 

Once again, as with many of Hollywood's new output, the critics have praised the effects and the performance of the lead, but have criticised the story and script as being weak.

 

The same can be said for the remake of 'The Thing' which purported to be a prequel to the 1982 film, but subsequently ignored the plot details of that film and thus contradicted it. 

It would seem that the producers of such movies are so preoccupied with making a guaranteed profit out of the cult followers of these previous films that they have forgotten to make sure the stories make sense if it is to be seen as related to the other film.

Where can the trend for this be seen to have started? One can look to the early 1990s, perhaps, for the answer. With the film 'Alien 3' , 20th Century Fox decided to begin shooting this sequel without a script!  David Fincher, who directed this film and later had his name removed from the credits as he was so disgusted with it and his experience making it, has said that Fox studio executives told him that you 'could film someone pissing against a wall for two hours and call it Alien 3 and people would still go to see it.' 

Therefore profit would seem to be the only motive, and the art of making a good film seems to have gone out of the window.  

This worrying trend has continued over the years, with the abysmal Star Wars prequels, the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull debacle, Terminator 3, Aliens Vs Predator films, a toned down version of Robocop, and the latest Star Trek into darkness film which recycled the plot of computer game Wing Commander 4.

Successes in this vein have been the Batman films of Christopher Nolan, 

which took the franchise back to its dark origins from the campness of Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, and the latest Superman offering 'Man of Steel' which offered a grittier take on Superman.  

If Hollywood studio bosses can learn from these two successful remakes then there maybe some hope for them.  

In terms of script-writing, one can find more adult oriented writing in the films of France and Eastern countries, while Hollywood seems to be intent on writing for the lowest common denominator all the time, in a quest to make their films appeal to the most amount of people in order to make as much profit as possible.  All this does is sacrifice the actual art form and reason one has to go and see a film.  We sincerely hope that Hollywood will take a step forward into making films that are not totally dumbed down, money driven, culturally irrelevant escapades. 

The Next Avenger Movie from Marvel!

Marvel: Black Panther is the next Avenger Movie!

The Black Panther

Many Marvel fans were waiting for the introduction of this superhero into the Avengers series.  Marvel fans would know that Black Panther plays a big part in some of the comics' story lines. The character already made an appearance in Ironman  and the Avengers cartoons, leaving fans anticipating his introduction into the marvel film series.

At long last the film is in production from Marvel Cinematic Universe and the release date is set for November 3rd 2017!  The Black Panther will be played by actor Chadwick Boseman. Not one of America's most famous black actors but very talented none the less. He acted and produced 42 (2013), Get on up (2014).

The Black Panther is the royal leader of an African nation, and is bestowed with powers. His hero name is T'Challa King of Wakanda. The character was created in 1966, also making an appearance in X-Men comics and was married to Storm.

He is given his powers from an entity called the Panther God. These powers increase his physical abilities, similar to that of Sabertooth and Wolverine. He is also very smart: he holds a Ph.D in physics from Oxford.  He holds considerable amounts of knowledge of Wakanda's most precious resource: a powerful metal called Vibranium which is in the runnings of being the Marvel Universe's strongest metal alongside Adamantium (the metal coating Wolverine's skeleton). Vibranium is the metal used to create the unbreakable shield of Captain America.

Film Reviews for you!

On this blog we will be reviewing the latest films to come out of Hollywood and the international market.  We will also be doing retrospective reviews of films from previous decades that you may have never seen when they came out and are wondering whether they are worth watching.

The medium of film has changed society in an incredible way since its inception in the early 1900s. From silent movies through to the 'talkies', then from black and white to colour, the advance of the medium has never been stopped.  The theatre and music hall provide an escape from drab reality that film takes to a next level, due to its very nature, even now 4d cinemas are appearing, including the touch sense in our experience of a story!

The experience of going to the cinema and watching a movie on the big screen is also key for many to enjoying films, whether on their own or with partners or family and friends.  Being in the dark transfixed to a massive screen witha state of the art surround sound system takes the viewer out of themsleves and into the world of the film, if it is a successful film, that is.

And that is where this blog comes in.  We review the films to see if they meet this important requirement. If it is a thriller, does it thrill? If it is a horror, does it scare?  These are the all important questions that the viewer needs to know before they part with their hard-earned cash to see, or buy a film.

We will also be reviewing the best Television programmes, as many now are up there with the cinematic greats in terms of feeling, entertainment and depth.  

The film genre is here to stay, always pushing technology and societal trends to the limit, and we aim to cover this for you...